BIOLOGIST

Alexander Fleming

1881 - 1955

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Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin (or penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium rubens has been described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease". For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922, and along with it a bacterium he named Micrococcus lysodeikticus, later renamed Micrococcus luteus. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Alexander Fleming is the 4th most popular biologist, the 47th most popular biography from United Kingdom (down from 31st in 2019) and the 2nd most popular British Biologist.

Alexander Fleming is most famous for his discovery of penicillin.

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Among BIOLOGISTS

Among biologists, Alexander Fleming ranks 4 out of 1,097. Before him are Charles Darwin, Carl Linnaeus, and Gregor Mendel. After him are James Watson, Ivan Pavlov, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Ernst Haeckel, Konrad Lorenz, Rosalind Franklin, and Karl Landsteiner.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1881, Alexander Fleming ranks 4. Before him are Pablo Picasso, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and Pope John XXIII. After him are Stefan Zweig, Béla Bartók, Alexander Kerensky, Roger Martin du Gard, Lu Xun, Cecil B. DeMille, Anna Pavlova, and Enver Pasha. Among people deceased in 1955, Alexander Fleming ranks 2. Before him is Albert Einstein. After him are Thomas Mann, James Dean, Dale Carnegie, José Ortega y Gasset, Arthur Honegger, Sadako Sasaki, James B. Sumner, Alberto Ascari, Fernand Léger, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, Alexander Fleming ranks 47 out of 8,785. Before him are Thomas Hobbes (1588), Edmond Halley (1656), Alexander Graham Bell (1847), Mary I of England (1516), Charles Dickens (1812), and Alan Turing (1912). After him are Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (1947), Thomas Hardy (1840), Bernard Montgomery (1887), James Cook (1728), Mary, Queen of Scots (1542), and J. J. Thomson (1856).

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Among BIOLOGISTS In United Kingdom

Among biologists born in United Kingdom, Alexander Fleming ranks 2. Before him are Charles Darwin (1809). After him are Rosalind Franklin (1920), Robert Edwards (1925), Robert Brown (1773), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823), John Boyd Orr (1880), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825), John Sulston (1942), Francis Crick (1916), John Edward Gray (1800), and Christian de Duve (1917).

British born Biologists

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