Alexander Fleming

Fleming, Alexander 

Born Aug. 6, 1881, in Lochfield; died Mar. 11, 1955, in London. British microbiologist. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1943) and member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1946).

Fleming graduated from St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School of the University of London in 1906. He conducted research at the Bacteriological Institute in London from 1908 to 1914 and from 1918 to 1948; he became a professor there in 1928 and was director of the institute from 1946 to 1954. From 1948 to 1955, Fleming was a professor of bacteriology at the University of London, and from 1951 to 1954, rector of the University of Edinburgh. He was the first president of the Society for General Microbiology.

Fleming’s main works dealt with immunology, general bacteriology, chemotherapy, antiseptics, and antibiotics. Fleming discovered the antibiotics lysozyme (1922) and penicillin (1929). He shared a Nobel Prize in 1945 with H. Florey and E. Chain.

WORKS

Penicillin: Its Practical Application, 2nd ed. London, 1950. (Editor.)

REFERENCES

“Aleksandr Fleming (1881–1955)” (obituary). Antibiotiki, 1956, vol. 1, no. 1.
Ermol’eva, Z. V. “Aleksandr Fleming.” Klinicheskaia meditsina, 1957, vol. 35, no. 2, p. 157.
Maurois, A. Zhizn’ Aleksandra Fleminga. Moscow, 1961. (Translated from French.)