Plot
This is the story of the invention of penicillin and the scientists behind the work. The main character, Howard Florey, races against time to create his magic bullet that will ultimately save the lives of thousands of soldiers during the second world war and win him the Nobel prize. It is a story of intrigue, suspense and bitter rivalry, set mainly in Oxford, England during World War Two.
Keywords: penicillin
Sir Alexander Fleming FRSE, FRS, FRCS(Eng) (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin from the mould Penicillium notatum in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.
In 1999, Time magazine named Fleming one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his discovery of penicillin, and stated:
Fleming was born on 6 August 1881 at Lochfield , a farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, Scotland. He was the third of the four children of farmer Hugh Fleming (1816–1888) from his second marriage to Grace Stirling Morton (1848–1928), the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. Hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage. He was 59 at the time of his second marriage, and died when Alexander (known as Alec) was seven.
Ludovico Einaudi OMRI (Italian pronunciation: [ludoˈviːko eiˈnaudi]) (born 23 November 1955 in Turin, Piedmont) is an Italian pianist and composer.
Einaudi was born in Turin, Italy. His mother played to him on the piano as a child. He began his musical training at the Conservatorio Verdi in Milan, gaining a diploma in composition in 1982. That same year, he studied with Luciano Berio and gained a scholarship to the Tanglewood Music Festival.
After studying at the Conservatory in Milan, and subsequently with Berio, he spent several years composing in traditional forms. In the mid-1980s he began to search for a more personal expression in a series of works for dance and multimedia, and later for piano. His music is ambient, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism, world music, and contemporary pop. He has made a significant impact in the film world, with four international awards to his name.[citation needed]
His father, Giulio Einaudi, was a publisher, and his grandfather, Luigi Einaudi, was President of Italy between 1948 and 1955. He currently resides on a vineyard in the Italian region of Piedmont.
Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey OM FRS (24 September 1898 – 21 February 1968) was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Sir Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the making of penicillin. Florey's discoveries are estimated to have saved over 6 million lives, in Australia. Florey is regarded by the Australian scientific and medical community as one of its greatest scientists. Sir Robert Menzies, Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, said that "in terms of world well-being, Florey was the most important man ever born in Australia".
Born the youngest of five children in Adelaide, South Australia, Howard Florey was educated at St Peter's College, Adelaide, where he was a brilliant student and junior sportsman. He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide from 1917 to 1921. At the university he met Ethel Reed, another medical student, who became both his wife and his research colleague. A Rhodes Scholar, he continued his studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving the degrees of BA and MA. In 1926 he was elected to a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a year later he received the degree of PhD from the University of Cambridge.