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fleming was born on 6 august 1881 at lochfield, near darvel, ayrshire, scotland. following his school education he worked in a shipping office for 4 years, enrolling at st mary’s hospital medical school in paddington in 1903 on the suggestion of his elder brother tom. he qualified with distinction in 1906. fleming was asked to join the research department at st mary's where he became assistant bacteriologist to sir almroth wright, a pioneer in vaccine therapy and immunology. he gained a bsc with gold medal in 1908 and became a lecturer at st mary's until 1914.

in 1909, he developed a medium for isolating the ‘acne bacillus’ which led to the successful treatment of cases with vaccines. shortly after, he began the work on the new drug salvarsan for the treatment of syphilis. this marked the beginning of chemotherapy and fleming’s lifelong interest in the investigation of chemical antiseptics in the treatment of infection.

fleming served throughout world war i as a captain in the royal army medical corps. following world war i, he actively searched for antibacterial agents, having witnessed the deaths of many soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds and, in 1921, he discovered lysozyme, which he always considered more important than the discovery of penicillin. he was elected professor of bacteriology of the university of london in 1928.

by 1927, fleming was investigating the properties of staphylococci. on 3 september 1928, fleming returned to his laboratory having spent august on holiday with his family. before leaving, he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. on returning, fleming noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci that had immediately surrounded it had been destroyed, whereas other colonies farther away were normal. fleming grew the mould in a pure culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. he identified the mould as being from the penicillium genus, and, after some months of calling it ‘mould juice’, named the substance it released penicillin on 7 march 1929. he investigated its positive antibacterial effect on many organisms, and noticed that it affected bacteria such as staphylococci and many other gram-positive bacteria.

fleming was modest about his part in the development of penicillin, describing his fame as the ‘fleming myth’ and he praised florey and chain for transforming the laboratory curiosity into a practical drug. fleming's accidental discovery and isolation of penicillin in september 1928 marks the start of modern antibiotics. he also discovered very early that bacteria developed resistance whenever too little penicillin was used or when it was used for too short a period. for this reason fleming cautioned about the use of penicillin in his many speeches around the world, warning people not to use the antibiotic unless there was a properly diagnosed reason, and if used, to ensure the proper dosage was taken and for the proper length of time for the antibiotic course.

by the late 1940s, he increasingly spent much time away from the bench, delivering lectures and receiving numerous honours, including the nobel prize for medicine in 1945 and a knighthood. ever eager to try anything new, he used phase-contrast microscopy to study proteus vulgaris and produced evidence to support the traditional theory of flagella being regarded as the organs of motility in bacteria.

his first wife, sarah, died in 1949. their only child, robert fleming, became a doctor. in 1953, he married his second wife amalia, a greek colleague at st mary's. fleming had a heart attack and died at his home in london in 1955. he was buried in st paul’s cathedral.

her career as a biochemist started at university college, london, working with r. h. a. plimmer. she there studied the lactase of intestinal mucosa and showed that this enzyme was inhibited by glucose but not by galactose . she turned next to the synthesis of esters of palmitic acid and then worked on metabolism in experimental diabetes. this work was interrupted by the 1914-18 war, during which she served with the red cross in france and at salonika.

after the war she returned to cambridge and worked in the department of frederick gowland hopkins on the fat-soluble vitamins (stephenson & clark, 1920; stephenson, 1920). hopkins in his wisdom encouraged her to leave the fields of animal metabolism and vitamins and to initiate a comprehensive study of the biochemical activities of bacteria.  she analysed the steps in the development of research in the field of bacterial metabolism, and pointed out that research took place at a series of levels. together with margaret whetham and juda quastel, she developed the washed suspension technique, which had originated with louis pasteur, for extracting enzymes from bacteria.

following marjory stephenson's death in 1948, members of the committee felt that such a distinguished pioneer of both the society and microbial biochemistry should be commemorated. it was decided that a fund should be set up in the form of an endowed memorial lectureship with the hope that such a tribute would inspire nominations from individuals that had made exceptional contributions to the discipline of microbiology.  thus the first of the society's named lectures came into being with money being raised by soliciting subscriptions. by 1953 a sufficient number of finances had been accumulated to establish the marjory stephenson memorial lecture.

marjory stephenson obituary notice

 

muriel robertson obituary notice the sixth marjory stephenson prize lecture

 

in 1939 he was appointed to the staff of the water pollution research laboratory of the department of scientific and industrial research at watford, where he worked for 14 years on the various aspects of water bacteriology, covering water treatment, sewage and trade wastes. in 1953 he left government service for the research department at the food supplier tate & lyle, where he worked on producing a food yeast.

leslie alfred allen obituary notice

 

ralph st john-brooks was educated at trinity college, dublin, where he graduated with first-class honours in natural science in 1904. he was a specialist in bacteriology, with rank of captain, at the county of london war hospital, epsom, from 1915 to 1919, and at the royal army medical college, millbank, 1919-20.

in 1920 he was invited by sir charles martin, frs, to become curator of the national collection of type cultures at the lister institute. the collection was formed mainly from strains collected by members of the institute’s staff, and many came from the diagnostic laboratory of the institute under john ledingham, the chief bacteriologist. it was sponsored jointly by the lister institute and the medical research committee (later council). st john-brooks remained in this post until his retirement in 1946. during his curatorship he was largely responsible, with robert earl buchanan and robert stanley breed, for developing the international bacteriological code of nomenclature.
 

ralph st john-brooks obituary notice

in 1946, he moved to the department of biological standards where he was director from 1947 to 1952. in 1952, he left this post to become director of the lister institute of preventive medicine and professor of experimental pathology at the university of london, appointments which he held until retirement in 1971. he is famous for his simple method of performing viable counts of bacteria and for his co-authorship of william w.c. topley and graham s. wilson’s principles of bacteriology, virology and immunity, begun when topley died in 1944 and continued to the 7th edition published in 1984. the results of his studies on inflammation and the prevention of infection are, however, the most important parts of his outstanding contribution to medical microbiology.

in 1961, he was elected fellow of the royal society, where he served on many committees and became biological secretary and vice president from 1963 to 1968. he was an honorary member of the pathological society of great britain and ireland. in 1953, he was appointed cbe and, in 1966, he was knighted. sir ashley miles died a month before his 84th birthday in 1988.

sir arnold ashley miles obituary notice

 

in the early 1940s knight was seriously concerned that microbiology was not regarded as a separate and unified discipline, that there were no courses for teaching it in the uk., and that there was no central meeting place in the uk for the wide variety of practising microbiologists. he believed, as did many others, that the ‘grave subdivisions of the subject’ had been brought about by the importance of the different fields of application, and the teaching and study of the different microbial forms as parts of different disciplines, e.g. algae and fungi as parts of botany, bacteriology in medical schools, viruses with plant and animal pathology, protozoa as part of zoology.

his concern and his activities associated with these matters contributed significantly to the founding of the society in 1945 and of the journal of general microbiology in 1947, and to his appointment in 1951 as the first professor of microbiology in the first university department of microbiology in the uk at reading university. he participated in the preliminary discussions which led to the inaugural meeting of the society in february 1945. at this meeting sir alexander fleming was elected the first president of the society and knight was elected with 10 others to 2022世界杯对阵分析 of its first committee.

bert cyril james gabriel knight obituary notice

 

during world war ii, at the instigation of both the medical research council and the armed forces, henry worked as part of a group of scientists headed by a. c. thaysen on a project to supersede cellulolysis and the sulfur bacteria. widespread malnutrition was, quite correctly, expected as a result of the war, and one of the first installations for preparing a food yeast on a pilot scale was set up at teddington. the potential of microbes as protein sources intrigued henry and the topic remained one of his major interests for the rest of his career.

henry was an influential and respected figure in the learned societies associated with microbiology. he was president of the society for applied bacteriology, a fellow of the institute of biology and its president from 1967 to 1969, he was the first chairman of the microbiology group of the society of chemical industry, fellow of the institute of food science and technology, of the royal society of medicine and of the royal society of arts. he played an important part in the organisation of brunel university, and brunel recognised his contributions, both to the university and to science, by conferring upon him an honorary doctorate of science in 1969. he died on 8 august 1975 at the age of 78.

henry james bunker obituary notice

 

christopher went on to found the world health organization's (who) world influenza centre based at the national institute for medical research (nimr). he was deputy director of the nimr from 1952 to 1961. among the many academic honours he received were the stewart prize of the bma, the robert koch gold medal, a honorary lld from the university of aberdeen and a honorary md from the university of lund. he was knighted in 1961. he died in 1987.

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born in 1892 at helensburgh near glasgow, kenneth smith was educated at dulwich college, the royal college of science and manchester university where he was awarded an msc in 1922 and a dsc in 1926. in 1927 he joined the newly formed potato virus research station at cambridge, where he became a director in 1939. he realized that potato viruses were not restricted to potatoes and that there were many viruses of other hosts; therefore he changed the name to the plant virus research station. subsequently it became the plant virus research unit and, finally, the virus research unit of the agricultural research council. among the viruses he discovered were the cytoplasmic polyhedrosis group and tipula iridescent virus; the former group has been named smithia after him. he developed methods for using viruses for the biological control of insect pests. he also carried out extensive ultrastructural studies on the viruses using the electron microscope.

kenneth smith was a prolific writer. as well as a large number of scientific papers he wrote many textbooks on virology. his wide knowledge of the biological characters of plant viruses and the numerous viruses that he was first to describe is shown in a textbook of plant virus diseases first published in 1937; he entirely revised it in 1973 when he was more than 80 years old and it still remains a standard text. he wrote several books successfully popularizing the science of virology. he was a co-editor of advances in virus research from 1953 until his death and was on the editorial board of several journals. he was made a cbe in 1956. 

kenneth manley smith obituary notice