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Published online 29 October 2002 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news021028-2
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Mouldy debate gets new life
Penicillin paper restores Fleming's healthy reputation.
Inspired by musicologists' use of fragmented scores to complete the unfinished works of great composers, a British researcher has pieced together Alexander Fleming's laboratory scribblings to recreate a paper that he says restores the reputation of the much-maligned discoverer of penicillin.
Fleming published details of the antibiotic effects of a mould that had killed off bacterial cultures in his poorly sterilized petri dishes, but never isolated penicillin from the mould or published work on its potential as a drug.
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