Alexander Fleming, the physician who first demonstrated penicillin’s antibacterial effect, was Scottish.
Fleming was born in 1881 at Lochfield farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland. He trained in medicine at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London and later worked there as a bacteriologist. In 1928, he observed that a Penicillium mould contaminating a Staphylococcus culture inhibited bacterial growth.
Fleming’s achievement was the experimental demonstration that the mould secreted an antibacterial substance, which he named penicillin. He published his findings in 1929, although the difficult chemical work of isolating and producing penicillin was accomplished later by researchers including Ernst Chain, Howard Florey and their Oxford colleagues.
The distractors reflect common mix-ups about British and Irish scientific history. Fleming was Scottish, not English, Welsh or Irish; his discovery took place in London, but his nationality was Scottish.