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Oh and by the way: IT WASN'T LOUIS PASTEUR THAT DISCOVERED PENICILLIN!!! []IT WAS ALEXANDER FLEMING!
Quote from: Chemistry4me on 10/03/2009 05:39:23Oh and by the way: IT WASN'T LOUIS PASTEUR THAT DISCOVERED PENICILLIN!!! []IT WAS ALEXANDER FLEMING!Are you sure? I've been buying Flemigised milk for years!!!
it was Alisander Flemming that discovered it.
In 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered accidentally that a mould (Penicillium notatum) contaminating left over cultures of bacteria was actually inhibiting bacterial growth. He got published his observation in a scientific journal and almost forgot about it.Later on two pathologists in London, Florey and Chain, managed after months of hard work and no money (IIWorld War 1939)to grow a little amount of penicillium using large culture containers (fermentators). Purified penicillin could cure lethal bacterial infection in mice/rats.Those basic experiments led to further development of penicillin producing techniques and to extraordinary results in human bacterial infections.After several years the scientist and the two pathologists got the Nobel Prize for Medicine.http://www.molbio.princeton.edu/courses/mb427/2001/projects/02/antibiotics.htmPostScriptum: but only A.Fleming will be remembered in History.(When you find something, publish first...and forget about the rest of the hard work!)
...Penicillin had been discovered by Fleming in 1928 as a result of observations on a mould which developed on some germ culture plates but the active substance was not isolated. In 1939, Florey and Chain headed a team of British scientists, financed by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, whose efforts led to the successful small-scale manufacture of the drug from the liquid broth in which it grows. In 1940 a report was issued describing how penicillin had been found to be a chemotherapeutic agent capable of killing sensitive germs in the living body. Thereafter great efforts were made, with government assistance, to enable sufficient quantities of the drug to be made for use in World War II to treat war wounds....http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1945/florey-bio.html
Yes, not for discovering it , but for understanding what they discovered.