British Expats - Greatest Aussie? You Decide

Quote:

Originally Posted by astonished

florey by a mile. Flemmings role in comparison was minor. In fact when Floreys team invented penicillin with no help from flemming it is a mute point wheter flemming could even rember his original experiment. He certainly never understood the significance of his random discovery.

Fleming published his discovery in 1929 in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, but little attention was paid to the paper. Fleming continued his investigations but found that it was difficult to grow penicillium mould and having made it, it was even more difficult to refine it. Fleming's impression was that, because of the problem of producing it in quantity and because its action seemed slow, penicillin would not be an important in treating infection. Fleming also became convinced that penicillin would not last long enough in the human body to kill bacteria. Many clinical tests were inconclusive, probably since they used it as an antiseptic. In 1933 he dramatically cured Keith Rogers and suddenly he had a notable clinical case to show that might interest a chemist to further pursue the goal of developing a stable form of penicillin. At the same time as doing other research, he continued until 1940 to try and interest a chemist skilled enough to achieve this.

Howard Florey led a large team of scientists at Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford. The team had previously done work with Fleming's Lysozyme and Florey had read Fleming's paper that described the antibacterial effects of penicillin. In 1938 he chose to try to purify three promising substances, hoping that at least one of them might prove useful. One of the three substances was penicillin.

Sir Henry Harris said in 1998: "Without Fleming, no Chain or Florey; without Chain, no Florey; without Florey, no Heatley; without Heatley, no penicillin." There were many more people involved in the Oxford team, and at one point the entire Dunn School was involved in its production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming

And I assume you mean "moot" point.