Nobel Prize Banquet Speech and Fun Facts

For many years I have read of people getting the Nobel Prize. Then I always regarded them as a superior class to which it was almost impossible to aspire. Now suddenly I find myself in that class and I wonder whether they are so different. Did they obtain this great distinction - for indeed it is the greatest distinction a scientist can obtain - by deep thought or did Dame Fortune play a part. We all know that chance, fortune, fate or destiny - call it what you will has played a considerable part in many of the great discoveries in science. We do not know how many, for all scientists who have hit on something new have not disclosed exactly how it happened. We do know, though, that in many cases it was a chance observation which took them into a track which eventually led to a real advance in knowledge or practice. This is especially true of the biological sciences for there we are dealing with living mechanisms about which there are enormous gaps in our knowledge. I am here because of penicillin and perhaps the story of penicillin illustrates what I am saying.
A myth of Fleming is that Winston Churchill's father paid for Fleming's education after Fleming saved Winston's life
I isolated the contaminating mould. It made an antibacterial substance which I christened penicillin. I studied it as far as I could as a bacteriologist. I had a clue that here was something good but I could not possibly know how good it was and I had not the team, especially the chemical team, necessary to concentrate and stabilise the penicillin. Then fortune again intervened for they obtained their results in the midst of a great war when ordinary economics are in abeyance and large scale production could go ahead as it would never have done in times of peace. The result is that in an incredibly short time manufacturing difficulties have been overcome and penicillin is being produced on a large scale. I have been trying to use penicillin to illustrate two points. The first is that team work may inhibit the primary initiation of something quite new but once a clue has been obtained team work may be absolutely necessary to bring the discovery to full advantage. The second is that destiny may play a large part in discovery. It was destiny which contaminated my culture plate in 1928 - it was destiny which led Chain and Florey in 1938 to investigate penicillin instead of the many other antibiotics which had then been described and it was destiny that timed their work to come to fruition in war-time when penicillin was most needed. It may be that while we think we are masters of the situation we are merely pawns being moved about on the board of life by some superior power. Thank you.

Fleming received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945.
Fleming's Nobel Prize medal was acquired by the National Museums of Scotland in 1989, and will be on display when the Royal Museum re-opens in 2011.
Fleming was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Fleming was awarded the Hunterian Professorship by the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Fleming was knighted, as Knights Bachelor, in 1944;
When 2000 was approaching, at least three large Swedish magazines ranked penicillin as the most important discovery of the millennium. Some of these magazines estimated that about 200 million lives have been saved by this discovery.
A statue of Alexander Fleming stands outside the main bullring in Madrid, Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas. It was erected by subscription from grateful matadors, as penicillin greatly reduced the number of deaths in the bullring.
Flemingovo nÃ¡mÄ›stÃ is a square named after Fleming in the university area of the Dejvice community in Prague.
In mid-2009, Fleming was commemorated on a new series of banknotes issued by the Clydesdale Bank; his image appears on the new issue of â‚¬5 notes.
91006 Fleming, an asteroid in the Asteroid Belt, is named for Fleming.

"One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. "