- Wikipedia

{"parse":{"title":"Alexander Fleming","pageid":1937,"text":{"*":"

For other people named Alexander Fleming, see Alexander Fleming (disambiguation).

\n\n\n

Sir Alexander Fleming FRS FRSE FRCS
Fleming in his laboratory, c. 1943
Born	(1881-08-06)6 August 1881 Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland
Died	11 March 1955(1955-03-11) (aged 73) London, England
Resting place	St Paul's Cathedral
Alma mater	\n Royal Polytechnic Institution \n St Mary's Hospital Medical School \n
Known for	Discovery of penicillin and lysozyme
Spouses	\n \n Sarah Marion McElroy \n (m. 1915; died 1949) \n \n Amalia Koutsouri-Vourekas \n (m. 1953) \n
Awards	\n Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1945)^[1] \n Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh (1945) \n Actonian Prize (1949) \n
Scientific career
Fields	Bacteriology immunology
Institutions	St Mary's Hospital, London
\n
Signature

Sir Alexander Fleming FRS FRSE FRCS^[2] (6 August 1881 \u2013 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. 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\".^[3]^[4] For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.^[5]^[6]^[7]\n

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.\n

Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944.^[8] In 1999, he was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third \"greatest Scot\" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace.\n

\n\n

v t e Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1901\u20131925	\n 1901: Emil Behring \n 1902: Ronald Ross \n 1903: Niels Finsen \n 1904: Ivan Pavlov \n 1905: Robert Koch \n 1906: Camillo Golgi / Santiago Ram\u00f3n y Cajal \n 1907: Alphonse Laveran \n 1908: \u00c9lie Metchnikoff / Paul Ehrlich \n 1909: Emil Kocher \n 1910: Albrecht Kossel \n 1911: Allvar Gullstrand \n 1912: Alexis Carrel \n 1913: Charles Richet \n 1914: R\u00f3bert B\u00e1r\u00e1ny \n 1915 \n 1916 \n 1917 \n 1918 \n 1919: Jules Bordet \n 1920: August Krogh \n 1921 \n 1922: Archibald Hill / Otto Meyerhof \n 1923: Frederick Banting / John Macleod \n 1924: Willem Einthoven \n 1925 \n	$\"\"$
1926\u20131950	\n 1926: Johannes Fibiger \n 1927: Julius Wagner-Jauregg \n 1928: Charles Nicolle \n 1929: Christiaan Eijkman / Frederick Gowland Hopkins \n 1930: Karl Landsteiner \n 1931: Otto Warburg \n 1932: Charles Scott Sherrington / Edgar Adrian \n 1933: Thomas Morgan \n 1934: George Whipple / George Minot / William Murphy \n 1935: Hans Spemann \n 1936: Henry Dale / Otto Loewi \n 1937: Albert Szent-Gy\u00f6rgyi \n 1938: Corneille Heymans \n 1939: Gerhard Domagk \n 1940 \n 1941 \n 1942 \n 1943: Henrik Dam / Edward Doisy \n 1944: Joseph Erlanger / Herbert Gasser \n 1945: Alexander Fleming / Ernst Chain / Howard Florey \n 1946: Hermann Muller \n 1947: Carl Cori / Gerty Cori / Bernardo Houssay \n 1948: Paul M\u00fcller \n 1949: Walter Hess / Ant\u00f3nio Egas Moniz \n 1950: Edward Kendall / Tadeusz Reichstein / Philip Hench \n
1951\u20131975	\n 1951: Max Theiler \n 1952: Selman Waksman \n 1953: Hans Krebs / Fritz Lipmann \n 1954: John Enders / Thomas Weller / Frederick Robbins \n 1955: Hugo Theorell \n 1956: Andr\u00e9 Cournand / Werner Forssmann / Dickinson W. Richards \n 1957: Daniel Bovet \n 1958: George Beadle / Edward Tatum / Joshua Lederberg \n 1959: Severo Ochoa / Arthur Kornberg \n 1960: Frank Burnet / Peter Medawar \n 1961: Georg von B\u00e9k\u00e9sy \n 1962: Francis Crick / James Watson / Maurice Wilkins \n 1963: John Eccles / Alan Hodgkin / Andrew Huxley \n 1964: Konrad Bloch / Feodor Lynen \n 1965: Fran\u00e7ois Jacob / Andr\u00e9 Lwoff / Jacques Monod \n 1966: Francis Rous / Charles B. Huggins \n 1967: Ragnar Granit / Haldan Hartline / George Wald \n 1968: Robert W. Holley / Har Khorana / Marshall Nirenberg \n 1969: Max Delbr\u00fcck / Alfred Hershey / Salvador Luria \n 1970: Bernard Katz / Ulf von Euler / Julius Axelrod \n 1971: Earl Sutherland Jr. \n 1972: Gerald Edelman / Rodney Porter \n 1973: Karl von Frisch / Konrad Lorenz / Nikolaas Tinbergen \n 1974: Albert Claude / Christian de Duve / George Palade \n 1975: David Baltimore / Renato Dulbecco / Howard Temin \n
1976\u20132000	\n 1976: Baruch Blumberg / Daniel Gajdusek \n 1977: Roger Guillemin / Andrew Schally / Rosalyn Yalow \n 1978: Werner Arber / Daniel Nathans / Hamilton O. Smith \n 1979: Allan Cormack / Godfrey Hounsfield \n 1980: Baruj Benacerraf / Jean Dausset / George Snell \n 1981: Roger Sperry / David H. Hubel / Torsten Wiesel \n 1982: Sune Bergstr\u00f6m / Bengt I. Samuelsson / John Vane \n 1983: Barbara McClintock \n 1984: Niels Jerne / Georges K\u00f6hler / C\u00e9sar Milstein \n 1985: Michael Brown / Joseph L. Goldstein \n 1986: Stanley Cohen / Rita Levi-Montalcini \n 1987: Susumu Tonegawa \n 1988: James W. Black / Gertrude B. Elion / George H. Hitchings \n 1989: J. Michael Bishop / Harold E. Varmus \n 1990: Joseph Murray / E. Donnall Thomas \n 1991: Erwin Neher / Bert Sakmann \n 1992: Edmond Fischer / Edwin G. Krebs \n 1993: Richard J. Roberts / Phillip Sharp \n 1994: Alfred G. Gilman / Martin Rodbell \n 1995: Edward B. Lewis / Christiane N\u00fcsslein-Volhard / Eric F. Wieschaus \n 1996: Peter C. Doherty / Rolf M. Zinkernagel \n 1997: Stanley B. Prusiner \n 1998: Robert F. Furchgott / Louis Ignarro / Ferid Murad \n 1999: G\u00fcnter Blobel \n 2000: Arvid Carlsson / Paul Greengard / Eric Kandel \n
2001\u2013present	\n 2001: Leland H. Hartwell / Tim Hunt / Paul Nurse \n 2002: Sydney Brenner / H. Robert Horvitz / John E. Sulston \n 2003: Paul Lauterbur / Peter Mansfield \n 2004: Richard Axel / Linda B. Buck \n 2005: Barry Marshall / Robin Warren \n 2006: Andrew Fire / Craig Mello \n 2007: Mario Capecchi / Martin Evans / Oliver Smithies \n 2008: Harald zur Hausen / Luc Montagnier / Fran\u00e7oise Barr\u00e9-Sinoussi \n 2009: Elizabeth Blackburn / Carol W. Greider / Jack W. Szostak \n 2010: Robert G. Edwards \n 2011: Bruce Beutler / Jules A. Hoffmann / Ralph M. Steinman (posthumously) \n 2012: John Gurdon / Shinya Yamanaka \n 2013: James Rothman / Randy Schekman / Thomas C. S\u00fcdhof \n 2014: John O'Keefe / May-Britt Moser / Edvard Moser \n 2015: William C. Campbell / Satoshi \u014cmura / Tu Youyou \n 2016: Yoshinori Ohsumi \n 2017: Jeffrey C. Hall / Michael Rosbash / Michael W. Young \n 2018: James P. Allison / Tasuku Honjo \n 2019: Gregg L. Semenza / Peter J. Ratcliffe / William Kaelin Jr. \n 2020: Harvey J. Alter / Michael Houghton / Charles M. Rice \n 2021: David Julius / Ardem Patapoutian \n 2022: Svante P\u00e4\u00e4bo \n 2023: Katalin Karik\u00f3 / Drew Weissman \n 2024: Victor Ambros / Gary Ruvkun \n

v t e 1945 Nobel Prize laureates
Chemistry	\n Artturi Ilmari Virtanen (Finland) \n
Literature (1945)	\n Gabriela Mistral (Chile) \n
Peace	\n Cordell Hull (United States) \n
Physics	\n Wolfgang Pauli (Austria) \n
Physiology or Medicine	\n Alexander Fleming (Great Britain) \n Ernst Boris Chain (Great Britain) \n Howard Florey (Australia) \n
\n Nobel Prize recipients \n 1940 \n 1941 \n 1942 \n 1943 \n 1944 \n 1945 \n 1946 \n 1947 \n 1948 \n 1949 \n 1950 \n

v t e History of infectious diseases
Individual diseases	\n Cholera \n HIV/AIDS \n Leprosy \n Malaria \n Plague \n Polio \n Smallpox \n Syphilis \n Tuberculosis \n Typhoid fever \n Yellow fever \n
People	\n Alexander Fleming \n Maurice Hilleman \n Edward Jenner \n Robert Koch \n Louis Pasteur \n Jonas Salk \n Ignaz Semmelweis \n John Snow \n Israel Jacob Kligler \n
Major epidemics	\n Black Death (1346\u20131353) \n Spanish flu (1918\u20131920) \n HIV/AIDS pandemic (1981\u2013present) \n COVID-19 pandemic (2019\u2013present\") \n
Other	\n Discovery of disease-causing pathogens \n Smallpox eradication \n Social history of viruses \n

v t e Time 100: The Most Important People of the 20th Century
Leaders & revolutionaries	\n David Ben-Gurion \n Winston Churchill \n Mahatma Gandhi \n Mikhail Gorbachev \n Adolf Hitler \n Ho Chi Minh \n Pope John Paul II \n Ruhollah Khomeini \n Martin Luther King Jr. \n Vladimir Lenin \n Nelson Mandela \n Mao Zedong \n Ronald Reagan \n Eleanor Roosevelt \n Franklin D. Roosevelt \n Theodore Roosevelt \n Margaret Sanger \n Margaret Thatcher \n Unknown Tiananmen Square rebel \n Lech Wa\u0142\u0119sa \n
Artists & entertainers	\n Louis Armstrong \n Lucille Ball \n The Beatles \n Marlon Brando \n Coco Chanel \n Charlie Chaplin \n Le Corbusier \n Bob Dylan \n T. S. Eliot \n Aretha Franklin \n Martha Graham \n Jim Henson \n James Joyce \n Pablo Picasso \n Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein \n Bart Simpson \n Frank Sinatra \n Steven Spielberg \n Igor Stravinsky \n Oprah Winfrey \n
Builders & titans	\n Stephen Bechtel Sr. \n Leo Burnett \n Willis Carrier \n Walt Disney \n Henry Ford \n Bill Gates \n Amadeo Giannini \n Ray Kroc \n Est\u00e9e Lauder \n William Levitt \n Lucky Luciano \n Louis B. Mayer \n Charles E. Merrill \n Akio Morita \n Walter Reuther \n Pete Rozelle \n David Sarnoff \n Juan Trippe \n Sam Walton \n Thomas J. Watson Jr. \n
Scientists & thinkers	\n Leo Baekeland \n Tim Berners-Lee \n Rachel Carson \n Albert Einstein \n Philo Farnsworth \n Enrico Fermi \n Alexander Fleming \n Sigmund Freud \n Robert H. Goddard \n Kurt G\u00f6del \n Edwin Hubble \n John Maynard Keynes \n Leakey family \n Jean Piaget \n Jonas Salk \n William Shockley \n Alan Turing \n Francis Crick & James Watson \n Ludwig Wittgenstein \n Wright brothers \n
Heroes & icons	\n Muhammad Ali \n The American G.I. \n Lady Diana Spencer \n Anne Frank \n Billy Graham \n Che Guevara \n Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay \n Helen Keller \n Kennedy family \n Bruce Lee \n Charles Lindbergh \n Harvey Milk \n Marilyn Monroe \n Emmeline Pankhurst \n Rosa Parks \n Pel\u00e9 \n Jackie Robinson \n Andrei Sakharov \n Mother Teresa \n Bill W. \n

Authority control databases $\"Edit$
International	ISNI VIAF FAST WorldCat
National	Germany United States France BnF data Japan Italy Australia Czech Republic Spain Portugal Netherlands Norway Latvia Croatia Chile Greece Korea Sweden Poland Israel Catalonia Belgium
Academics	Scopus
Artists	MusicBrainz
People	Netherlands Trove Deutsche Biographie DDB
Other	IdRef SNAC 2

Early life and education

Scientific contributions

Antiseptics

Discovery of lysozyme

Discovery of penicillin

Experiment

Reception and publication

Purification and stabilisation

Medical use and mass production

Antibiotic resistance

Personal life

Death

Awards and legacy

Myths

The Fleming myth

The Churchills

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Alexander Fleming

Talks

21 December, 1943