Alexander Fleming quotes

Born
6 August 1881 Darvel, East Ayrshire, Scotland.

Died
11 March 1955.

Occupation
Physician, microbiologist, pharmacologist.

Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist who is best known for his discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 for his discovery.

Nature makes penicillin; I just found it.
– Alexander Fleming

Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack.
– Alexander Fleming

Suggested remedy for the common cold: A good gulp of whiskey at bedtime-it’s not very scientific, but it helps.
– Alexander Fleming

Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.
– Alexander Fleming

 

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Roentgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new.
– Alexander Fleming

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 enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.
– Alexander Fleming

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.
– Alexander Fleming

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 to neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening.
– Alexander Fleming

It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self…I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject.
– Alexander Fleming