How did Howard Florey help develop penicillin?
Australian scientist Howard Florey led the Oxford team that turned penicillin into a life-saving medicine in the early 1940s. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Ernst Chain and Alexander Fleming.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, when he noticed mould killing bacteria in a dish, but he could not purify it or show it would work in patients.
Florey, born in Adelaide in 1898, led a team at the University of Oxford from the late 1930s that included biochemist Ernst Chain and Norman Heatley. They found ways to purify penicillin and showed in 1940 that it cured infected mice.
From lab to battlefield
In 1941, the team treated the first human patients. Florey then worked with American companies to mass-produce penicillin, which saved countless lives among soldiers in the Second World War.
Florey later became a peer, Baron Florey, served as President of the Royal Society and was Chancellor of the Australian National University, where he helped establish its medical research school.
His portrait appeared on the Australian fifty-dollar paper note, and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne is named after him. He died in 1968.
Did You Know?
Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies called Florey one of the most important people ever born in Australia.