At which Oxford school did Florey's team begin penicillin research in 1939?

Florey’s team began penicillin research in 1939 at Oxford’s Sir William Dunn School of Pathology.

Howard Florey became professor of pathology at the school in 1935 and assembled a multidisciplinary group there. The team included Ernst Chain, Edward Abraham, Norman Heatley, Arthur Gardner, Margaret Jennings and Jean Orr-Ewing. Their initial project was broader than drug development: they were investigating antibacterial substances made by microorganisms.

Chain drew Florey’s attention to Alexander Fleming’s largely forgotten work on Penicillium mould. The researchers then obtained mould, cultivated it in liquid media and developed ways to extract and concentrate its active substance. Their work at the Dunn School established the foundation for penicillin’s medical development.

The school is sometimes confused with other Oxford institutions, including the Radcliffe Science Library or the Medical School. Those are not the laboratory named in the historical account. The Dunn School’s contribution was especially important because it connected microbiology, biochemistry, pathology and clinical testing rather than treating Fleming’s observation as an isolated discovery.

In 1945, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Fleming for penicillin and its curative effects.