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Alexander Fleming
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Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) was one of three men who discovered and developed the first antibiotic, penicillin. Fleming was born on a farm in Scotland and worked in a shipping company as a youth. He hated the work... and when he received a small inheritance from a relative, he used it to go to medical school. Initially he worked for Almroth Wright, who believed strongly in the effectiveness of vaccinations to prevent disease. But Fleming thought there might be other ways to treat infections.
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Alexander Fleming was a scientist who was working on staphylococci. These are the germs that make wounds go septic. Whilst cleaning the culture dishes one day he saw a mould growing on one of the plates. This in itself was not unusual, but on this occasion there were no germs growing around the growth. Curious as to what caused the germs to stop growing, and eager to find out what the mould was, Fleming grew more of it and experimented. He found that the mould acted against anthrax and diphtheria without creating any harmful side effects.
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Alexander Fleming has a sympathetic nature and instinctively reaches out to people in need of help. Fleming ... has a deeply ingrained tendency to want to improve or "fix" other people's lives, which can be annoying to the person who has no desire to be changed or "helped" in this way. For Alexander, affection and caring must be expressed in tangible acts or service of some kind.
Alexander Fleming enrolled in Kilmarnock Academy on 28 August 1894. The son of a farmer, he was born at Lochfield, a farm near Darvel to the east of Kilmarnock. At the time Kilmarnock Academy was the Higher Class school for most of north and east Ayrshire and so it was there he was sent to complete his education. The entry in McDougall's New Admission Register arranged to meet regulations of Scotch Education Department, Dated 26th March 1887, still held in Kilmarnock Academy, records:
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In 1928 Alexander Fleming came across some mould in an old culture dish; from it came one of the greatest discoveries of medicine: Penicillin, an antibiotic that kills bacteria without producing toxic side-effects. However, it wasn’t until 1940, when two scientists at Oxford succeeded in demonstrating that the new drug could be purified and mass-produced, that the treatment of infections and infectious diseases was revolutionized. Fleming insisted on the importance of chance or luck in all scientific endeavour; without it Fleming would never have been a medical doctor, and humanity might still be waiting for the miracle of Penicillin.
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Alexander Fleming was born on a farm at Lochfield near Darvel in East Ayrshire, went to the local school, and then for two years at the Kilmarnock Academy. After working in a shipping office for five years, 20 year old Fleming inherited some money from an uncle. (For the story about his father rescuing a boy, see the section fable). His older brother, Tom, was already a physician and suggested to his younger sibling that he follow the same career, and so in 1901, the younger Alexander enrolled at St Mary's Hospital, London. He qualified for the school with distinction in 1906 and had the option of becoming a surgeon. By chance... he had been a member of the rifle club (he had been an active member of the Territorial Army since 1900).
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Alexander Fleming