Alexander Fleming (MD, Sir, Nobel)

Alexander Fleming (MD), a physician and microbiologist, was best known for discovering, by "accident", the antibiotic penicillin. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. Time Magazine acknowledged Fleming as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century. With respect to his discovery of penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming said, "Discoveries of this magnitude are rare . . . God took care to hide that country till he judged his people ready; then, he chose me for his whisper and I found it and its yours." His authorized biographer Andre Maurois remarked on the fortuitous chain of events that lead to his discovery of penicillin when he said: "Looking back on his (Fleming) career, we find woven into the web of life a number of apparently irrelevant chance events without one of which probably not have reached its climax...We can almost see the fingerprint of God pointed to the direction his career should take at every turn." Dr. Fleming was a Roman Catholic and is buried St. Paul's Cathedral in London.