Elizabeth Ayer
It’s Sep 28! One of my favourite days in history: the day Alexander Fleming claimed to have discovered penicillin.
There are a few things I love about Fleming’s story. #1 is that Alexander Fleming was messy and kinda gross. His previous breakthrough was finding an antibacterial agent in snot and other bodily fluids. Let’s just say he experimented *very* widely.
Elizabeth Ayer
Fleming never managed to produce penicillin in useful quantities. It would take another 17 years and many other scientists to isolate the compound, figure out how to keep it stable, do clinical trials, and devise a way to mass produce it.
Fleming never overstated his role. “My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation,” he said.
It all started with noticing.
I think about that a lot.
Elizabeth Ayer
Then in 1928, Fleming was growing some staphylococcus bacteria, and he left lids off some plates and went on holiday. He would later contradict himself about whether it was accidental or on purpose, but it doesn’t really matter.
A mould from the lab below, one occupied by a mycologist they called “Old Mouldy,” settled on one of his plates and killed off bacteria around it.
Elizabeth Ayer
Fleming showed the mouldy plate around his lab, and nobody else cared. They said things like “it may well turn out to be important,” which, in 20th century British, is incredibly dismissive.
Maybe it was because he called it “mould juice” for the first 6 months of talking about it, before rebranding it “penicillin,” I dunno.
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