A Portland stone plaque is set into a brick wall at the west
corner of Imperial College London (St Mary's). The plaque is flanked by two
further Portland stone pieces that are highly decorated. The main plaque
says:
Fleming
Discovered
Penicillin
In the centre is a raised circular disc that has a profile
looking to the right and around the edge are the words:
Alexander Fleming Prix Nobel
1945
Lower down the wall is a small, stainless steel plaque that
reads:
Sir Alexander Fleming 1881 -
1955
discovered penicillin at St Mary's in 1928
The stone above was carved by Tim
Metcalf, unveiled by
Sir George Pinker on April 27, 1993
and
commissioned by the School Art Committee with the generous support
of
The Koh Trust - The Imperial College
Trust
The Harold Bridges Foundation
The Medical School - St Mary's
Association
The Rayne Foundation - Pfizer Ltd
Professor P S Russell -
The Angloe-Hellenic League
This plaque was unveiled by Dr Robert
Fleming on October 30, 1993
The Nobel Prize website (visit
link) tells us:
"Sir Alexander Fleming was born at Lochfield near Darvel
in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6th, 1881. He attended Louden Moor School,
Darvel School, and Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London where he attended
the Polytechnic. He spent four years in a shipping office before entering St.
Mary's Medical School, London University. He qualified with distinction in 1906
and began research at St. Mary's under Sir Almroth Wright, a pioneer in vaccine
therapy. He gained M.B., B.S., (London), with Gold Medal in 1908, and became a
lecturer at St. Mary's until 1914. He served throughout World War I as a captain
in the Army Medical Corps, being mentioned in dispatches, and in 1918 he
returned to St.Mary's. He was elected Professor of the School in 1928 and
Emeritus Professor of Bacteriology, University of London in 1948. He was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1943 and knighted in 1944.
Early in his medical life, Fleming became interested in
the natural bacterial action of the blood and in antiseptics. He was able to
continue his studies throughout his military career and on demobilization he
settled to work on antibacterial substances which would not be toxic to animal
tissues. In 1921, he discovered in «tissues and secretions» an important
bacteriolytic substance which he named Lysozyme. About this time, he devised
sensitivity titration methods and assays in human blood and other body fluids,
which he subsequently used for the titration of penicillin. In 1928, while
working on influenza virus, he observed that mould had developed accidently on a
staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free
circle around itself. He was inspired to further experiment and he found that a
mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He
named the active substance penicillin.
Sir Alexander wrote numerous papers on bacteriology,
immunology and chemotherapy, including original descriptions of lysozyme and
penicillin. They have been published in medical and scientific
journals.
Fleming, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons
(England), 1909, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London), 1944,
has gained many awards. They include Hunterian Professor (1919), Arris and Gale
Lecturer (1929) and Honorary Gold Medal (1946) of the Royal College of Surgeons;
Williams Julius Mickle Fellowship, University of London (1942); Charles Mickle
Fellowship, University of Toronto (1944); John Scott Medal, City Guild of
Philadelphia (1944); Cameron Prize, University of Edinburgh (1945); Moxon Medal,
Royal College of Physicians (1945); Cutter Lecturer, Harvard University (1945);
Albert Gold Medal, Royal Society of Arts (1946); Gold Medal, Royal Society of
Medicine (1947); Medal for Merit, U.S.A. (1947); and the Grand Cross of Alphonse
X the Wise, Spain (1948).
He served as President of the Society for General
Microbiology, he was a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Science and Honorary
Member of almost all the medical and scientific societies of the world. He was
Rector of Edinburgh University during 1951-1954, Freeman of many boroughs and
cities and Honorary Chief Doy-gei-tau of the Kiowa tribe. He was also awarded
doctorate, honoris causa, degrees of almost thirty European and American
Universities.
In 1915, Fleming married Sarah Marion McElroy of
Killala, Ireland, who died in 1949. Their son is a general medical
practitioner.
Fleming married again in 1953, his bride was Dr. Amalia
Koutsouri-Voureka, a Greek colleague at St. Mary's.
In his younger days he was a keen member of the
Territorial Army and he served from 1900 to 1914 as a private in the London
Scottish Regiment.
Dr Fleming died on March 11th in 1955 and is buried in
St. Paul's Cathedral."