On 6 August 1881 Sir Alexander Fleming, the Nobel prize-winning bacteriologist, was born.
Born near Darvel in rural Ayrshire, Fleming became a lecturer at St Mary's Medical School in London. After seeing front line service in the Army Medical Corps throughout the Great War, he returned to St Mary's and began his research into anti-bacterial substances. In 1928, whilst carrying out work on the influenza virus, he noticed that mould had accidentally developed on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. This discovery fired Fleming's work and he found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.
