Which Irish physician's work on Staphylococcus aureus influenced Fleming's 1928 study?

Joseph Warwick Bigger’s work on Staphylococcus aureus influenced Fleming’s 1928 study.

Bigger, an Irish physician at Trinity College Dublin, investigated bacterial variation with his students C. R. Boland and R. A. Q. O’Meara. In 1927, they reported that a particular strain of Staphylococcus aureus could produce colonies with different characteristics. The strain, called “Y,” had been isolated from pus taken from a patient’s axillary abscess.

Fleming was studying variation in S. aureus at St Mary’s Hospital in London and used Bigger’s findings as a model for his own experiments. His research scholars Daniel Merlin Pryce and later Stuart Craddock helped him pursue the work during 1927 and 1928.

The project led to the famous contaminated culture plate observed in 1928. A Penicillium mould had prevented nearby staphylococci from growing, prompting Fleming to investigate the antibacterial substance he later named penicillin. Bigger did not discover penicillin, but his bacterial-variation research helped shape the experiment that revealed it.