The Mould in Dr Florey's Coat: The Remarkable True Story of the Penicillin Miracle by Eric Lax

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Dust jacket has some light creasing at edges and spine. Interior and binding are also very good.

Many people know that in the autumn of 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin's antibiotic potential by chance while examining a stray mould that had bloomed in a dish of bacteria in his London laboratory. But few realise that Fleming was unable to isolate penicillin from the medium it grows in and that he is merely one and by no means the most important character in the remarkable story of the antibiotic's development as a drug.

The others are Howard Florey an Australian who in 1935 was made Professor of Pathology at Oxford University, where he would run the Sir William Dunn School; the German Jewish emigre Ernst Chain, who in 1935, while working at Cambridge University, was recommended to Florey; and Norman Heatley, one of the few scientists in Britain capable of the precise micro-analysis of organic substances, who in 1936 joined Florey and Chain at Oxford, and whose practical genius was critical. (book flap)