August 6th: Alexander Fleming

On this date in 1881 the scientist Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin was born, so here are 10 things you may not know about him and his discoveries:

1. Fleming served in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force and was a member of the rifle club at medical school.
2. He originally planned to become a surgeon, but took a temporary job in bacteriology and realised that was where his interest lay.
3. He was known as a brilliant scientist but not for being tidy. We probably have his untidiness to thank for his greatest discovery, which was made when he returned from his holiday, having stacked up his Bacteria cultures on a bench in a corner, and fungus had started growing on some of them. He noticed the effect the fungus was having on the colonies of bacteria and famously commented, "That's funny..."
4. At first, though, Fleming didn't think penicillin would be all that useful as it was difficult to produce large quantities of it and it seemed to act too slowly. Nevertheless he published his work. Two more scientists, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain, built on that and worked out how to mass produce penicillin so that it could be used to treat wounded soldiers in World War II.
5. Fleming, Florey and Chain jointly received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945.
6. The laboratory in which Fleming discovered and tested penicillin is preserved as the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum in St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington.
7. Before penicillin, he also discovered lysozyme, a mildly antiseptic enzyme present in body fluids. This was another accidental discovery: he had a cold and a drop of mucus from his nose dropped onto a culture of bacteria. He decided to see what effect this had on the bacteria and found it killed them, although it was not as effective as penicillin. It was a significant contribution to human immune system research.
8. There is a statue of Alexander Fleming outside the main bullring in Madrid, erected by matadors, because penicillin meant they were much more likely to survive injuries sustained in the ring.
9. He was also named Honorary Chief Doy-gei-tau of the Native American Kiowa tribe.
10. And he has an Asteroid named after him: 91006 Fleming.