On this day: Fleming notices mold and discovers penicillin

On September 28, 1928, the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming noticed in his laboratory a dish where no staphylococcus colonies grew around the mold that had grown there. This observation led to the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic.

The mold got into the dish by accident, and it is this accident that is usually recalled first. But it fell on prepared ground: by then Fleming had already been searching for a remedy against bacteria for several years, so he did not miss the unusual pattern of growth.

The name stuck later: the substance that was discovered was not called penicillin on that same day, but rather became the name for what killed bacteria. The date September 28, 1928 remains the date of the observation itself, not the date the medicine appeared.

The path from observation to a finished drug turned out to be long. Mass production of penicillin began only in the 1940s, more than ten years after that dish with mold in Fleming's laboratory.

Image: Official photographer Public domain

Translation editor: Ловушкин А.