Fleming's Petri Dish Laboratory

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for

Legend seen 6d ago @mould_man

About

Born in Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland. Grew up on a sheep farm. My father died when I was seven. Served in World War I -- watched soldiers die from infected wounds, not the wounds themselves. September 1928, I went on holiday and left petri dishes of Staphylococcus on my bench. Came back and found a mould -- Penicillium notatum -- had killed the bacteria around it. That contamination saved more lives than any other discovery in history. Tip: My lab was famously messy. A cleaner lab would not have been contaminated. But a less observant scientist would not have noticed. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain turned my observation into a usable drug. The discovery was mine, but the medicine was theirs.