Howard Walter Florey

Howard Walter Florey (24 September 1898, Adelaide, Australia - 21 February 1968, Oxford, United Kingdom) was an Australian pharmacologist who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. with Ernst Boris Chain and Alexander Fleming.

Semblance

Florey studied at the University of Adelaide and moved to Oxford to specialize. He investigated the cytological activity of various molds and bacteria, and chose the antibiotic penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming, for his research.

He collaborated with Ernst Boris Chain to extract penicillin from cultures of the fungus Penicillium notatum and purify it using chemical methods, an objective that both researchers achieved in 1940.

Career

After periods in the United States and at Cambridge, Florey joined the Joseph Hunter Chair of Pathology at the University of Sheffield in 1931. In 1935 he returned to Oxford as Professor of Pathology and Fellow of Lincoln College, leading a team of researchers. In 1938, working with Ernst Boris Chain, Norman Heatley and Edward Abraham, he read Alexander Fleming's article discussing the antibacterial effects of Penicillium notatum .

In 1941, Florey and Chain treated their first patient, Albert Alexander, who had suffered a scratch on his face, which later spread, causing a severe facial infection due to the presence of strep and staphylococci. His face, eyes and scalp were swollen, to the point that one eye had been removed to relieve some of the pain. The day after being treated with penicillin, he began to recover. However, the researchers did not have enough penicillin to help him make a full recovery, and he relapsed and died. Because of this experience and the difficulty in producing penicillin, the researchers shifted their focus to children, who could be treated with smaller amounts.

Florey's team investigated the large-scale production of the mold and the efficient extraction of the active ingredient, to the point that, by 1945, the production of penicillin had become an industrial process in the service of Allied troops for the Second World War. However, Florey always said that the project was originally driven by scientific interests, and that the medicinal discovery was an added bonus:

People sometimes think that we work in penicillin because we were interested in dealing with the sufferings of humanity. I don't think these sufferings have been through our minds. This was an interesting scientific exercise, and that penicillin could be used in medicine is very rewarding, but this was not the reason why we started working on it.

Howard Florey

Penicillin development was a team effort, as these things tend to be.

Howard Florey, Baron Florey

Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Ernst Boris Chain and Alexander Fleming. Fleming first observed the antibiotic properties of penicillin-producing mold, but it was Chain and Florey who developed the process necessary for it to become a useful treatment.

On 15 July 1965 he was awarded the UK Order of Merit.

Eponymy

• Lunar crater Florey carries this name in his memory.
• The asteroid (8430) Florey also commemorates its name.