The Mould That Changed The World: The True Story Behind Penicillin

Podcast: Mysteries and Histories · Georgia Marie

Opublikowano: 2026-10-14

In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming noticed something strange in a contaminated Petri dish at his London laboratory: bacteria would not grow around a patch of mould. The substance responsible, which he named penicillin, would transform medicine, but discovering it was only the beginning. More than a decade later, Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and their Oxford colleagues, including Norman Heatley, turned Fleming’s observation into a treatment that could save lives. During the Second World War, British and American researchers and manufacturers overcame enormous production challenges to make the drug widely available. Penicillin helped turn once-deadly ba...