Which institution acquired Fleming's Nobel Prize medal in 1989?

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The National Museums of Scotland acquired Alexander Fleming’s Nobel Prize medal in 1989.

Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. The award recognized the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in infectious diseases. Fleming’s medal later entered the collection of National Museums of Scotland, where it became part of the public story of Scotland’s most famous medical scientist.

The medal is not held by the Royal Society, the Science Museum, or the British Museum. Those institutions have important scientific and medical collections, which makes them plausible distractors, but the specific acquisition in this question belongs to National Museums Scotland.

Fleming’s Nobel recognition came after a long, collaborative history. He first observed penicillin’s antibacterial action at St Mary’s Hospital in 1928, but Oxford researchers later developed methods to extract, purify, test, and mass-produce it. The Nobel award therefore honored both the original discovery and the development of penicillin into an effective treatment.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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