Fleming, Alexander

Farber, Eduard (1972). Emil Fischer. In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 5. New York Scribner. 

Fraton, Joseph S. (1990). Contrasts in Scientific Style Research Groups in the Chemical and Biochemical Sciences. Philadelphia American Philosophical Society. 

Lucier, J. J. (1993). Emil Fischer. Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, 1901-1992, ed. Laylin K. James. Washington, DC American Chemical Society Chemical Heritage Foundation, pp. 8-14. 

Alexander Fleming will always be remembered for turning a laboratory mishap into one of the great medical discoveries of the twentieth century. His discovery of penicillin in 1928 laid the foundation for modern antibiotic therapy and earned him a share of the 1945 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. 

Throughout his career Fleming was intensely interested in naturally occurring antibacterial substances, and penicillin was actually the second antibiotic that he discovered. In 1922 he described the antibacterial properties of lysozyme, a substance found in egg whites, mucus, and tears, which lysed, or dissolved, certain bacteria. Fleming found that lysozyme could turn a thick, milky white suspension of bacteria into a clear solution in a matter of seconds. 

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