Penicillin was discovered by Scottish physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming in 1928 at St. Mary's Hospital in London. He observed that a mold called Penicillium rubens (initially identified as Penicillium notatum) produced a substance that killed surrounding bacteria, which he named penicillin
. Fleming's discovery marked the beginning of the antibiotic era, as penicillin was the first true antibiotic capable of effectively treating bacterial infections that were often fatal before its introduction
. However, Fleming himself was unable to isolate and mass-produce penicillin as a drug. The development of penicillin into a practical and widely usable antibiotic was achieved later in the early 1940s by a team of scientists at Oxford University led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. They succeeded in purifying and producing penicillin in sufficient quantities for clinical use, which revolutionized medicine and saved countless lives
. In summary:
- Discovery of penicillin: Alexander Fleming, 1928
- Development into a usable drug: Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and team in the early 1940s
Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their contributions to penicillin
