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May 20, 2018 · Florey enjoyed classical music, gardening, photography and shooting home movies. In his late 50s he took up oil painting. In 1962, age 64, Florey retired from scientific research, becoming Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford.
Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey, OM FRS FRCP ( / ˈflɔːri /; 24 September 1898 – 21 February 1968) was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the development of penicillin .
In May, 1940 they performed one of the most important medical experiments in history. The work was so urgent that they came in to begin the experiment on the weekend, and on Saturday 25 May, Florey's team tested penicillin on eight mice injected with a lethal dose of streptococci bacteria.
- Breaking The Mould
- The First Patient
- Before Penicillin
- Setting The Stage For Penicillin
- Fabulous Fungus
- Penicillin Production
- So Who Was Howard Florey?
- Brilliant But Humble
Florey gathered a team of scientists at Oxford University in Britain in the 1930s, when working together on scientific discoveries as a group was not at all common. Nowadays scientists work together all the time, but Florey realised that science had reached a point where a team of specialists was needed - the job was too big for one person. His tea...
The results were so exciting Florey knew that it was time to test the drug on humans. The first patient in 1941 had been scratched by a rose thorn. Albert Alexander's whole face, eyes and scalp had swollen. He had already had an eye removed and abscesses drained; even his remaining eye had to be lanced to relieve the pain of the swelling. He was gi...
How many times have you accidentally pricked your finger on a rose thorn, or perhaps a sewing needle? Nowadays, if the wound became infected you'd be cured almost immediately. But before the second half of this century, you could have been in big trouble. Infections were feared then as cancer is feared today. Your glands would swell up and require ...
Three thousand years before penicillin, moulds and fermented materials had been used to cure various skin infections, although without an understanding of how they actually worked. But it wasn't until the late 1800s that scientific studies of antibiotics began. French chemist Louis Pasteur, after discovering that infectious diseases are spread by b...
Penicillin was the first naturally occurring antibiotic discovered (Prontosil, the first chemical used to cure certain infectious diseases, had been discovered in 1933 but had serious side effects). There are now more than 60 antibiotics, which are substances that fight bacteria, fungi and other microbes harmful to humans - the word means against (...
Florey's team worked under difficult circumstances with a lack of funding and equipment, but ensured penicillin production grew from the manufacture of a scarce and very impure brown powder to the commercial production of a purified and powerful antibiotic. At first penicillin was made using old dairy equipment. Hospital bedpans were used to grow m...
Florey's father owned a shoe business in Adelaide, having migrated from England for a warmer climate due to his wife's poor health. When she died of tuberculosis, he married Bertha and they had two daughters, followed by Howard. Howard was brilliant at schoolwork and outstanding at sport. He was inspired by his high school chemistry teacher to stud...
Florey was humble about his achievements, describing them in an interview in 1967 as a "terrible amount of luck" that "involved many others." He said, "All we did was to do some experiments and have the luck to hit on a substance with astonishing properties." He was a quiet man, but sure of himself and his direction. He inspired those around him wi...
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 was awarded jointly to Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Howard Walter Florey "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases"
In 1945 the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded to Fleming, Chain, and Florey in recognition of their contributions to the discovery and development of penicillin. Dr Gwyn Macfarlane now presents an extensively researched tribute to Florey, tracing his scientific ideas from germination to fruition.
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Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey of Adelaide and Marston (1898-1968), medical scientist, was born on 24 September 1898 at Malvern, Adelaide, third and youngest child and only son of Joseph Florey, a boot manufacturer from England, and his second wife, native-born Bertha Mary, née Wadham.
