Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum

This small museum commemorates the discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955).

When a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corp in World War I, Fleming had observed the anti-bacterial powers of substances that occurred naturally in the body. In the 1920s, as Professor of Bacteriology at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, Fleming built on his war-time experience and discovered penicillin on 3 September 1928.

Fleming anticipated the medical uses of penicillin but was forced to abandoned clinical trials because of the problems of producing a stable form of the substance. However, in the 1940s a team of scientists at Oxford completed Fleming's work, and in 1945 Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with the Oxford team.

Fleming's small laboratory has been restored to as it was in 1928, complete with medical equipment, original books and a newspaper.

A short video illustrates his work, the story of penicillin and its use in modern-day medicine.

Displays show Fleming's achievements, his earlier discovery of the body's own antiseptic, Lysozyme, the development of penicillin and the clinical trials carried out by the team of scientists at Oxford.