| Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 (with Ernst Boris Chain and Alexander Fleming) "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases" Sir Howard Walter Florey was born on 24th September, 1898, in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Joseph and Bertha Mary Florey. His early education was at St. Peter's Collegiate School, Adelaide, following which he went on to Adelaide University where he graduated with M.B.B.S. (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) in 1921. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, leading to the degrees of B.Sc. (Bachelor of Science) and M.A. (Master of Arts) (1924). He then went to Cambridge as a John Lucas Walker Student. In 1925 he visited the United States on a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship for a year, returning the following year for a Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he received his PhD in 1927. He also held concurrently the Freedom Research Fellowship at London Hospital. In 1927 he was also appointed Huddersfield Lecturer in Special Pathology at Cambridge, and in 1931 he succeeded to the Joseph Hunter Chair of Pathology at the University of Sheffield. In 1935, he left to become Professor of Pathology and a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. He was made an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1946 and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1952. In 1962 he was made Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford. During World War II he was appointed Honorary Consultant in Pathology to the Army and in 1944 he became Nuffield Visiting Professor to Australia and New Zealand. Sir Florey's best-known work dates from his collaboration with Ernst Chain, which began in 1938 when they conducted a systematic investigation of the properties of naturally occurring antibacterial substances. Lysozyme, an antibacterial substance found in saliva and human tears, was their original interest, but this then moved to substances now known as antibiotics. Their work on penicillin was a result of this interest. Penicillin was the first antibiotic used to successfully treat infectious diseases. Initially used during the second world war, it saved thousands of lives. Penicillin kills bacterial by interfering with cell wall growth, causing cell wall extension and eventually rupture because they are unable to divide. In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he observed that mould could stop bacterial growth, however it was not until 10 years later that Howard Florey and his team of scientists at Oxford University purified penicillin from the mould and made it available for use in treating infections. 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. By late 1943, mass production of the drug had commenced. By the end of the war, many laboratories were manufacturing the drug, including companies such as Merck, Squibb and Pfizer in the United States, and the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Australia. In fact, Australia was the first country that made the drug available for civilian use. His role as the leader of the team of scientists that discovered and developed penicillin won him the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1945, along with Alexander Fleming and Ernst Chain. He was knighted in 1944, and was decorated around the world by the UK, France, Australia and the US for his influence on the outcome of World War II. He was the first Australian elected to the prestigious position of President of the Royal Society in 1960, where he was known as 'the Bushranger President.' He was made Baron Florey of Adelaide in 1965 and accepted the Chancellorship of the Australian National University in 1965. | |
