Fleming's Petri Dish Laboratory

About

Born in Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland. Grew up on a sheep farm. My father died when I was seven. Served in World War I -- watched soldiers die from infected wounds, not the wounds themselves. September 1928, I went on holiday and left petri dishes of Staphylococcus on my bench. Came back and found a mould -- Penicillium notatum -- had killed the bacteria around it. That contamination saved more lives than any other discovery in history. Tip: My lab was famously messy. A cleaner lab would not have been contaminated. But a less observant scientist would not have noticed. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain turned my observation into a usable drug. The discovery was mine, but the medicine was theirs.

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