Who is alexander fleming

Mary's, he won the gold medal as the top medical student. Fleming had planned on becoming a surgeon, but a temporary position in the Inoculation Department at St. Mary's Hospital changed his path toward the then-new field of bacteriology. There, he developed his research skills under the guidance of bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Edward Wright, whose revolutionary ideas of vaccine therapy represented an entirely new direction in medical treatment.

He worked as a bacteriologist, studying wound infections in a makeshift lab that had been set up by Wright in Boulogne, France. Through his research there, Fleming discovered that antiseptics commonly used at the time were doing more harm than good, as their diminishing effects on the body's immunity agents largely outweighed their ability to break down harmful bacteria — therefore, more soldiers were dying from antiseptic treatment than from the infections they were trying to destroy.

Fleming recommended that, for more effective healing, wounds simply be kept dry and clean. However, his recommendations largely went unheeded. Returning to St. Mary's after the war, in , Fleming took on a new position: assistant director of St. Mary's Inoculation Department. He would become a professor of bacteriology at the University of London in , and an emeritus professor of bacteriology in In November , while nursing a cold, Fleming discovered lysozyme, a mildly antiseptic enzyme present in body fluids, when a drop of mucus dripped from his nose onto a culture of bacteria.

Thinking that his mucus might have some kind of effect on bacterial growth, he mixed it with the culture. A few weeks later, he observed that the bacteria had been dissolved. Alexander Fleming became interested in this. He used to leave bowls with bacteria cultures standing by his worktable. In he saw that in addition to bacteria, a mold fungus had begun to grow in a bowl and that the bacteria's growth had been impeded in the vicinity of the mold.

However, his work would remain obscure for nearly a decade. In , a team of scientists at Oxford University, led by Australian physiologist Howard Florey, began working to identify and isolate substances from molds that could kill bacteria.

Among the substances they studied was Fleming's penicillin. They were able to purify the substance and use it in experiments to treat mice who had been given lethal doses of bacteria. The experiments were overwhelmingly successful.

Penicillin rapidly became a mainstream medical treatment for a variety of infections, such as syphilis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and pneumonia. British and American drug companies began to manufacture the drug in large quantities, and by the end of World War II, it had saved millions of lives. Fleming was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in and was knighted in Over the course of his career, he authored numerous papers on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy and was honored with many international awards, including honorary doctoral degrees from almost thirty European and American universities.

Mary's Hospital. After completing his coursework at the top of his class in , he began working as a research assistant under Wright, head of the Inoculation Department at St.

Fleming received his M. Although he passed the exam and was accepted as a fellow in , he chose to stay in Wright's laboratory and pursue research rather than become a practicing surgeon. Fleming remained at St. Mary's for the entirety of his career, absent from the hospital only during the First World War, when he served as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps along with Wright and the rest of the Inoculation Department at a makeshift army laboratory in Boulogne, France.

Upon Wright's retirement in , Fleming became director of the department, which was renamed the Wright-Fleming Institute in , following Wright's death. Fleming also taught bacteriology at the hospital's medical school from to In December , he retired from his directorship of the institute, although he continued to visit the laboratory regularly until his death.

Fleming died of a heart attack at his home in London on March 11, , at the age of His ashes were interred at St. Paul's Cathedral.