Mould · Welcome to the Nobel Prize Laureate Collection

ID-nummer

2001.033.004

Titel

Mould

Objektkategori

Vetenskapliga instrument, material & modeller

Publik beskrivning

This dish contains mould from the Penicillium family. It was cultivated from the mould discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 in a dish that had been left standing in his laboratory. He noted that the mould had inhibited growth of the bacteria that the dish had been used for. It turned out that the mould had formed a substance, penicillin, which was later used in treatments for bacterial infections.
Ernst Boris Chain, Howard Florey and their colleagues succeeded in the early 1940s to produce penicillin in pure form and investigate its properties in greater detail. Additional efforts led to a drug that could be produced in large quantities.

A penicillium culture was given in 2001 to the Nobel Prize Museum by the Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum at St Mary's Hospital in London. The culture is kept at the Karolinska Institutet, which regularly supplies the Nobel Prize Museum with a new dish of Penicillium culture.

Pristagare

Sir Alexander Fleming

Provenance

295 Nobel Museum Temporary