Dr. Alexander Fleming     1929

Maybe you shouldn't wash your dishes before going on holiday. It could make you famous. That's what happened to Dr. Alexander Fleming, a bacteriologist from England. In 1928, Fleming was studying staphylococcus, a bacteria that causes pus formation. He left a pile of plates containing this bacteria on the end of his lab bench while he went on holiday. After frolicking in the sun, he returned to find that mould had grown on some of his plates. You know - that stuff you discover growing on the dishes you left lying under your bed! Fleming dumped the plates into a sink of disinfectant. Luckily for him, and for us, he forgot to put one of the plates in. This small oversight led to a huge scientific discovery. Dr. Fleming became intrigued with this dirty plate. Something spectacular was happening on it. Where the mould was growing, his staphylococcus bacteria was not. Somehow the mould stopped the bacteria from growing. Fleming thought that maybe that could stop bacteria from growing inside humans, too! This was a very big deal at the time because bacterial infections like meningitis, tuberculosis, and diphtheria caused many deaths. Through experiments, Fleming went on to show that extracts of this mould would inhibit the growth of many different types of bacteria, not just staphylococcus. He called this magic extract "mould juice". In 1929, the mould was finally identified as "Penicillium," so Fleming stopped calling his extract "mould juice" and renamed it penicillin, as it is still known today.