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Professor Florey visits M.E. to lecture on Penicillin. Photo by Brigadier Sidney Smith.

Top 10 Outstanding Facts about Howard Florey

Howard Florey was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Sir Ernst Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the development of penicillin. He was a solitary man, with few close friends; laboratory research and travel were his great loves.

He was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 24 September 1898. Howard Florey was the only boy in his family. His father was a bootmaker and ran a successful company. At school, Howard Florey was an excellent student. He did well in all subjects except Mathematics.

Howard Florey was a man of great ambition and ability. His strong character was prevalent at all times. The discovery of penicillin is estimated to have saved around 200 million lives. He is a great figure in the scientific and medical community.

1. He had two wives

Australian scientist Howard Florey. Photo by Australian News and Information Bureau.

In 1926, Howard Florey married Mary Ethel Reed, a fellow Australian who had studied medicine with Florey at the University of Adelaide. The marriage was not a very happy one. Howard was a workaholic whose sole emotional outlet from the point of marriage and for many years was his work.

Ethel assisted her husband with the clinical trials for Penicillin. They remained married despite the difficulties. In 1966, Ethel died. In June 1967, Florey married Dr. Margaret Jennings, his long-time colleague, and friend. The union was tragically short as Florey died in 1968.

2. Florey treated the first patient with penicillin in January 1941

The patient was an Oxford policeman with cellulitis, abscesses, and osteomyelitis due to a scratch from a rose thorn. He began improving with the penicillin drug therapy. However, the patient relapsed because penicillin had been produced in small quantities. Five additional patients were treated over the next three months and the impressive results were reported by Florey in the Lancet in August 1941.

3. Florey worked with Dr. Earnest Chain

Florey hired Chain upon the recommendation of Frederick Gowland Hopkins, the Cambridge biochemist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1929 for the co-discovery of vitamins. Florey wanted to pursue biochemical work in his laboratory.

Under the instruction of Florey, Chain began studying lysozyme. He fine-tuned his art in studying the subject. This enabled him and Florey to manage the discovery and large-scale production of penicillin.

4. Together with Dr. Chain, Florey finalized the study and production of penicillin

Howard Florey and his sister Hilda Gardner arriving in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in 1944. Photo by Unknown Author.

In 1929 Florey and his colleague, Dr. Ernest Chain, came across a paper titled, ‘Antibacterial Action of Cultures of Penicillium’ written by Alexander Fleming some ten years earlier. This paper detailed the antibacterial effects of a mould called Penicillium.

Noting the properties and potential of Penicillium, Florey and Chain decided to focus their research on this mould. Their Oxford research team discovered how to produce an effective and safe antibacterial agent from the raw mould juice and designed mass-production methods.

5. Fleming, Chain, and Florey were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1945

Howard Florey, Ernst Chain, and Alexander Fleming were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945 in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effects on various infectious diseases. Penicillin had been discovered by Fleming in 2928 but the active substance was not isolated.

In 1939, Florey and Chain headed a team of British scientists, financed by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, whose efforts led to the successful small-scale manufacture of the drug from the liquid broth in which it grows.

6. He became a heavy smoker during World War Two

He became a heavy cigarette smoker during World War II. Due to this, he developed progressive angina during the last 18 years of his life. He was a chain smoker.

7. His research was motivated by the interesting subject of study

Jubilee 150 Walkway Plaque commemorating Howard Florey, Baron Florey a.k.a. Lord Florey. Photo by Pdfpdf.

Florey claimed that even as humanity went through suffering from a lack of antibiotics, this was not his drive and motivation in making the discovery. “People sometimes think that I and the others worked on penicillin because we were interested in suffering humanity. I don’t think it ever crossed our minds about suffering humanity. This was an interesting scientific exercise, and because it was of some use in medicine is very gratifying, but this was not the reason that we started working on it.”  He said.

8. He was inspired by his chemistry teacher, Sneaker Thompson

Florey was educated at St. Peter’s College where a remarkable teacher, ‘Sneaker’ Thompson, fostered his interest in chemistry. This was the same teacher who inspired Lawrence Bragg. The teacher was so-called because he wore rubber-soled shoes.

9. Florey used animals to test the penicillin

Howard Florey and Ernst Chain investigated Fleming’s penicillin broth using a mouse protection test. In the test, Florey and Chain injected eight mice with a lethal suspension of bacteria and four of these were also given penicillin.

The four mice which received penicillin lived, while all the rest died. This proof that penicillin worked as an antibiotic against serious bacterial infections eventually led to the purification and mass production of penicillin.

10. He died of a congestive heart failure

Howard Florey Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia. Photo by Melburnian.

Florey died in England on 21st February 1968 and was cremated. A memorial tablet was placed in St. Nicholas’s parish church at Marston, Oxfordshire, where he lived, and a commemorative stone of South Australian marble was erected in Westminster Abbey. I. It reads: ‘His vision, leadership and research made penicillin available to mankind.’