Though Sir Alexander Fleming is credited with the discovery of a mould which developed on some germ culture plates, had it not been for Sir Howard Florey, this discovery would have remained only a scientific idiosyncrasy and nothing else. Florey is credited with taking the discovery further by isolating the active substance of penicillin from it. Together with Ernst B Chain, he developed a way of mass producing penicillin. The discovery of Penicillin came at a critical time and saved millions of lives during World War II and thereafter. It was due to this that he is considered by the Australian scientific and medical community as one of the greatest scientists. He was bestowed with numerous awards and honours in his lifetime including the prestigious Nobel Prize in Medicine. As a human being, he was a loner with few close friends; laboratory research and travel were among the few things that fascinated him. He was concerned about the population explosion due to improvements in the field of medicine.
