In 1928, which university elected Fleming Professor of Bacteriology?

In 1928, the University of London elected Alexander Fleming Professor of Bacteriology.

Fleming had returned to St Mary’s Hospital in London after serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War. His research career there included work under bacteriologist and immunologist Sir Almroth Wright, and he had already become known for investigations into bacterial infections and immunity.

The professorship was associated with St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, which was part of the University of London. The appointment came in the same year as Fleming’s famous observation of a mould contaminating a staphylococcus culture. He noticed that bacteria near the mould had been destroyed, beginning the work that led to penicillin.

The wording can cause confusion because Fleming’s laboratory and appointment were at St Mary’s, not at the University of Oxford, Cambridge or Edinburgh. Oxford later became central to penicillin’s purification and development through the work of Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and their colleagues, but it was not the university that elected Fleming professor in 1928.