Featured Article Summary #25

Howard Florey was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who played a crucial role in the development of penicillin. Although credit for the discovery of penicillin is often given to Alexander Fleming, it was Florey and his team at the University of Oxford who turned it into a useful drug. They developed techniques for manufacturing and testing penicillin, and conducted successful clinical trials. Florey also researched other topics such as contraception and lysozyme. His discoveries are estimated to have saved over 80 million lives, and he is considered one of Australia's greatest scientific figures. Howard Florey was born in Adelaide in 1898, the only son of a bootmaker. He had two older sisters and two older half-sisters. Florey attended private schools and excelled in academics and sports. Following in his sister's footsteps, he chose to study medicine at the University of Adelaide and met Mary Ethel Hayter Reed, a fellow medical student, through a university magazine. Howard Florey applied for a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford and was selected as the successful candidate. He insisted on taking his final qualifying exams before starting at Oxford. Florey travelled to England and enrolled at Magdalen College, where he studied under Sir Charles Scott Sherrington. He also participated in research expeditions and received fellowships to study in the United States. Florey eventually returned to the UK and married Ethel Reed. Florey didn't like working at London Hospital because the commute was too long and unpredictable. He and his wife lived in Belsize Park during the summer so he could focus on his work. He published his research on lacteals and lymphatic capillaries and wrote a thesis for a fellowship at Cambridge. He carried out experiments at Oxford and Cambridge because the facilities at London Hospital were not suitable. However, he was still able to study lacteals in patients undergoing abdominal surgery. Howard Florey was offered a lectureship at the University of Cambridge after the sudden death of Thomas Strangeways. Although he had to teach, Florey was able to focus on his research and recruited Jim Kent as his assistant who would remain in the role for forty years. During his time at Cambridge, Florey studied lysozyme and concluded that it played a minor role in natural immunity.