1-154-909 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

'Alexander Fleming Prix Nobel 1945'. Nobel prize medal awarded to bacteriologist Alexander Fleming. Fleming is shown in profile, in relief, with French text round the edge. In 1928 Fleming discovered penicillin but had to wait eleven years before Howard Florey and Sir Ernst Chain (with whom he shared the Nobel prize) perfected a method of producing the volatile drug, now known to the world as antibiotics. Fleming was appointed professor of bacteriology at London in 1938.