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Alexander Fleming

Also known as Sir Alexander Fleming

Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, botanist, and Nobel laureate (1881–1955)

AI overview

Alexander Fleming was a Scottish scientist who discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, which revolutionized medicine by enabling doctors to treat bacterial infections that were previously often fatal. His discovery earned him the Nobel Prize and fundamentally changed modern healthcare, saving countless lives through the development of antibiotics.

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Person · Open Library

Born: 1881
Died: 1955
Works: 14

Top works

On the use of salvarsan in the treatment of syphilis
Penicillin
Introductory address delivered at the opening of the session 1870-71
An inquiry into the physiological and medicinal properties of the aconitum napellus. To which are added observations on several other species of aconitum
Penicillin, its practical application

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Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: United Kingdom
Active from: 1908-05-28
Active to: 1964-08-12

audiobookspythriller

Official site Discogs

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Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 10
Total plays: 21

via Last.fm · Alexander Fleming

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

STAR: ultrafast universal RNA-seq aligner
· 2012 · cited 49,579x
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 41,509x
ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge
· 2015 · cited 30,127x
SPAdes: A New Genome Assembly Algorithm and Its Applications to Single-Cell Sequencing
· 2012 · cited 24,083x
QUANTUM ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
· 2009 · cited 22,526x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“How fortunate we didn't have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably not have been granted a licence, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realised.”
“When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, ... But I guess that was exactly what I did.”
“I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this—never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be—usually is, in fact—a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.”
“It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.”

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Wikidata facts

Image: Synthetic Production of Penicillin TR1468.jpg

Show 6 more facts

Commons category: Alexander Fleming
date of birth: 1881-08-06
date of death: 1955-03-00
Commons gallery: Alexander Fleming
name in native language: Alexander Fleming
P8168: Live at Last

Sources (4)

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~32 min read

Article

Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases". This was the first antibiotic substance discovered. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin (or penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease".

He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922, and along with it a bacterium he named Micrococcus lysodeikticus, later renamed Micrococcus luteus.