Penicillin and the dawn of the antibiotic era
- Date
- 1928 (developed for clinical use 1940–1945)
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- Western Europe & North America (UK, US)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
In September 1928 Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital in London, observed that a contaminating mould of the genus Penicillium inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus bacteria on a culture plate, and he named the active substance penicillin.
The discovery lay largely dormant until 1939–1941, when a team at Oxford led by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, with Norman Heatley and Edward Abraham, purified penicillin and demonstrated its therapeutic power against bacterial infection. Wartime collaboration between Britain and the United States drove large-scale production, and by 1943–1945 penicillin was treating Allied troops and civilians, dramatically reducing deaths from wound infections, pneumonia and other diseases. Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Penicillin inaugurated the antibiotic era, transforming the treatment of infectious disease and routine surgery, and spurring the search for further antibiotics. Its widespread use later contributed to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a continuing public-health concern.
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Empires active in 1928 (developed for clinical use 1940–1945)
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Formulation of quantum mechanics1925–1927
- Discovery of nuclear fissionDecember 1938 (explained January–February 1939)
- Haber-Bosch Process Industrialises Synthetic Nitrogen FertiliserSeptember 1913
- The Wright Brothers' Powered Flight17 December 1903
- Discovery of X-rays and radioactivity1895–1898
- Germ Theory of Disease Established by Pasteur and Koch1882 (Koch's tuberculosis bacillus, 24 March)
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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