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Alexander Fleming Quotes

Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist, physician, microbiologist, and pharmacologist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the world's first antibiotic substance benzylpenicillin from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy.

Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. In 1999, he was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. In 2002, he was chosen in the BBC's television poll for determining the 100 Greatest Britons, and in 2009, he was also voted third "greatest Scot" in an opinion poll conducted by STV, behind only Robert Burns and William Wallace. Wikipedia  

✵ 6. August 1881 – 11. March 1955  •  Other names Alexander Sir Fleming
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Alexander Fleming: 5 quotes4 likes

Famous Alexander Fleming Quotes

“When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer, … But I guess that was exactly what I did.”

Alexander Fleming

biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

“How fortunate we didn't have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably not have been granted a licence, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realised.”

Alexander Fleming

Reported in Dennis V. Parke, &quot;Clinical Pharmacokinetics in Drug Safety Evaluation,&quot; in ATLA: Alternatives To Laboratory Animals https://books.google.it/books?id=WMZNAQAAIAAJ, vol. 22, no. 3, May/June 1994, p. 208. <br class="br">The context is: &quot;the present approach to drug safety evaluation, based on experimental animal studies, is known to be of questionable scientific veracity and has never been satisfactorily validated as an appropriate surrogate system for man. My former teacher, Sir Alexander Fleming, in his late years, chided me, saying …&quot;

“I have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this—never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be—usually is, in fact—a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.”

Alexander Fleming

Lecture at Harvard University. Quoted in Joseph Sambrook, David W. Russell, Molecular Cloning (2001), Vol. 1, 153. <br class="br"> biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

“One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.”

Alexander Fleming

biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

“It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.”

Alexander Fleming

biographyonline.net http://www.biographyonline.net/scientists/alex-fleming.html

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