On a warm late August day in 1940, as war raged across Europe, a nine-year-old boy was scavenging the coastline near his Ayrshire home in search of treasure.
Scientific American
Penicillin Wasn’t Alexander Fleming’s First Major Discovery
It was lysozyme, an enzyme that attacks the cell walls of bacteria and just as with the celebrated antibiotic, he found it through pure serendipity
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Alexander Fleming studies mold cultures in his lab at the Wright Fleming Institute in London. Credit: Peter Purdy
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The development of COVID vaccines has spotlighted the ingenuity of 21st-century science. In a matter of months, researchers pinpointed the coronavirus’s spike protein, figured out how to provoke an immune response and produced vaccine candidates for trial. The inoculation, in its several forms, is being hailed as one of the greatest achievements in scientific history.