Which foundation funded Florey and Heatley's 1941 visit to the United States?

The Rockefeller Foundation funded Florey and Heatley’s 1941 visit to the United States. The foundation supported the Oxford researchers as they sought help with penicillin production, which Britain could not yet carry out at the required industrial scale.

Howard Florey and Norman Heatley traveled to the United States in June 1941. Their mission was not simply diplomatic: they carried penicillin samples, production knowledge and evidence that the drug could treat serious bacterial infections. The Rockefeller Foundation’s grant helped bring Heatley and Florey to American laboratories and connected them with researchers and institutions able to expand the work.

In the United States, the Oxford visitors worked with government scientists and pharmaceutical companies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped investigate mould strains, while American firms developed fermentation and production techniques. A more productive strain, ultimately associated with a mould found on a cantaloupe in Peoria, Illinois, became important to large-scale manufacture.

The foundation is sometimes confused with later government wartime agencies or with pharmaceutical companies that manufactured penicillin. Rockefeller provided crucial early financial support; it did not single-handedly mass-produce the drug. Industrial expansion depended on cooperation among British scientists, U.S. government laboratories and American manufacturers.