Alexander Fleming

(6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955)

Early life and
education

Fleming was born

on 6 August 1881
at Lochfield farm
near Darvel, in
Ayrshire, Scotland.
He was the third of
the four children of
farmer Hugh
Fleming (1816–
1888) from his
second marriage to
Grace Stirling
Morton (1848–
1928), the daughter
of a neighbouring
farmer
 Fleming served throughout World War I as a captain
in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was Mentioned
in Dispatches.
The great discover of penicillin

 "When I woke up just after dawn on September 28,

1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionise all medicine
by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria
killer," Fleming would later say, "But I suppose that was
exactly what I did."
 Fleming published his discovery in 1929, in
the British Journal of Experimental
Pathology, but little attention was paid to
his article.
Honours, awards and
achievements

 Fleming was a member of the Pontifical Academy

of Sciences
 Fleming was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
of London
 Fleming was awarded the Hunterian
Professorship by the Royal College of Surgeons of
England.
 Fleming was knighted, as a Knight Bachelor, by
king George VI in 1944.
 He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order
of Alfonso X the Wise in 1948.
Death
 On 11 March 1955, Fleming died at his home in London
of a heart attack. He was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.