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Landmark designation
The American Chemical Society, in collaboration with the Royal Society of Chemistry, designated the development of penicillin as an International Historic Chemical Landmark on November 19, 1999. The text of the plaque commemorating the event reads:
In 1928, at St. Mary's Hospital, London, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. This discovery led to the introduction of antibiotics that greatly reduced the number of deaths from infection. Howard W. Florey, at the University of Oxford working with Ernst B. Chain, Norman G. Heatley and Edward P. Abraham, successfully took penicillin from the laboratory to the clinic as a medical treatment in 1941. The large-scale development of penicillin was undertaken in the United States of America during the 1939-1945 World War, led by scientists and engineers at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture, Abbott Laboratories, Lederle Laboratories, Merck & Co., Inc., Chas. Pfizer & Co. Inc., and E.R. Squibb & Sons. The discovery and development of penicillin was a milestone in twentieth century pharmaceutical chemistry.
The Royal Society of Chemistry's Historic Chemical Landmarks can be found at http://www.rsc.org/lap/publicaf/landmarks.htm.
The discovery and development of penicillin |
Penicillin research at Oxford |
A move to the United States |
Increasing the yield of penicillin |
The involvement of pharmaceutical companies |
The challenge of scale-up |
The war effort |
Landmark designation
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