54. Fleming, Alexander. Autograph letter signed (“Alexander Fleming”), 1 page (5 x 8 in.; 127 x 203 mm.), on “Inoculation Department, St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, W.2.” letterhead stationery, 20 August 1945, written to “Your Excellency”, an unidentified dignitary of the French government. Stamped on verso by the French Embassy as being received 21 August 1945. Office notes, written in French, are written at the upper right corner of the letter. Usual folds.

Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, accepts an invitation from the French Minister of Public Health to visit Paris.

Fleming writes in full:
Your Excellency, I only returned from America last week to find your letter of August 1st awaiting me. I telephoned to your secretary that I would be glad to accept Fr. Billoux [Francois Billoux, French Minister of Public Health] invitation to go to Paris. I am honoured by the invitation and I would like to go to Paris before I go to any other European capital. It would suit me if the visit could be arranged early in September as I fear that I will be committed to visits to Copenhagen and to the Mediterranean later in the month and as I have said I would like to visit your country first.
Yours sincerely Alexander Fleming

By 1927, Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming had been investigating the properties of staphylococci. He was already well-known from his earlier work and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher, but his laboratory was often untidy. On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent August on holiday with his family. Before leaving, he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in the corner of his laboratory. Upon returning, Fleming noticed that one culture was contaminated with a fungus, and that the colonies of staphylococci immediately surrounding the fungus had been destroyed. Fleming grew the mold in a pure culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. He identified the mold as being from the Penicillium genus and named the substance it released penicillin on 7 March 1929, marking the start of modern antibiotics. Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain who collaborated in refining and mass-producing penicillin.
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