Penicillin was discovered by:
- (a)E. J. Butler
- (b)Waldeyer Fleming
- (c)Alexander Fleming
- (d)Robert Hooke
Correct — C, Alexander Fleming.
Returning to his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital, London, in September 1928, Alexander Fleming found a stray Penicillium mould growing on a staphylococcus culture plate, with the bacterial colonies nearest the mould dissolved away.
He named the active substance penicillin and published the observation in 1929. What he had seen was one microbe producing something that destroyed another — the idea the whole antibiotic era rests on.
He did not turn it into a medicine. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford purified penicillin and showed it cured infections; the three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Carry away that Fleming is the discoverer of penicillin, not the maker of the drug — 1928 is the plate, the usable medicine came later and from other hands.
- (a)E. J. Butler — Butler was a mycologist, and penicillin comes from a mould, so the field sounds close. His subject was fungi as agents of disease in plants, not a fungal product that kills bacteria.
He is the right answer to the founding of mycology and plant pathology in India — Imperial Mycologist at Pusa from 1905, author of Fungi and Disease in Plants (1918) and, with G. R. Bisby, The Fungi of India (1931).
- (b)Waldeyer Fleming — Both names here belong to nineteenth-century cell biology, a different field and a different century from a mould plate in a bacteriology laboratory. Waldeyer worked on cell nuclei and nervous tissue; Walther Flemming on cell division.
Waldeyer is the right answer to who introduced the term chromosome. Flemming — a surname one letter from Fleming's — described the stages of cell division and named the process mitosis.
- (d)Robert Hooke — Hooke belongs to seventeenth-century microscopy, the tool that later made microbiology possible, rather than to any drug that came out of it. He looked at a thin slice of cork through a compound microscope and saw rows of tiny box-like compartments.
He is the right answer to who coined the word 'cell', from that cork observation, published in Micrographia in 1665.
An antibiotic is a substance made by one microorganism that kills or halts the growth of another. Penicillin, produced by the Penicillium mould, was the first antibiotic to come into general clinical use.
Discovery and development were two separate achievements. Noticing in 1928 that the mould cleared bacteria from a culture plate was one; extracting, purifying and dosing the compound so patients could be treated was another, carried out later by a different team.
Penicillin stands at the head of the antibiotic era. Its arrival turned infections that regularly killed — wound sepsis, septicaemia, pneumonia — into treatable illnesses, and it set off the search for other drugs made by microbes.
That one name therefore reaches into several corners of general studies at once: how antibiotics work, the 1945 Nobel Prize, and the modern problem of antibiotic resistance all trace back to the same contaminated plate.
- Alexander Fleming noticed the effect of a Penicillium mould on a staphylococcus culture at St Mary's Hospital, London, in September 1928, and published it in 1929.
- Fleming had earlier found lysozyme, an antibacterial enzyme present in body secretions such as nasal mucus and tears, publishing the work in 1922.
- The 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went jointly to Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain for penicillin and its curative effect in infectious diseases.
- Florey and Chain's Oxford group purified penicillin and demonstrated its therapeutic use, converting Fleming's observation into a usable drug.
- E. J. Butler, a mycologist, was Imperial Mycologist at Pusa from 1905 and wrote Fungi and Disease in Plants (1918); he has been called the father of mycology and plant pathology in India.
- Robert Hooke coined the word 'cell' after examining cork under a microscope, describing it in Micrographia (1665).
- Walther Flemming described cell division and named it mitosis; Waldeyer introduced the term chromosome.
- Fleming's left-hand and right-hand rules in physics are named after John Ambrose Fleming, an electrical engineer, and not after Alexander Fleming.
The highlighted row carries the antibacterial work; the rows below it hold the discoveries the other names belong to, including a second Fleming who lives in physics.
- Two Flemings turn up in general studies: Alexander Fleming for penicillin, John Ambrose Fleming for the left- and right-hand rules. Read the subject of the question before choosing.
- Walther Flemming, spelt with a double m, is a third person again. An option can be one letter away from the right surname and still be wrong.
- A compound name in an option may join two separate scientists; check that the whole name, not just the half you recognise, belongs to one person.
- Being a mycologist places a name near mould without placing it near penicillin — nearness of field is not evidence of authorship of a discovery.
- Crediting Fleming with producing penicillin as a medicine overstates what he did; purification and clinical use belong to Florey and Chain.
The plain form is the one used here: a discovery is named, four people are offered, one matches.
The same credit has been folded into a match-the-columns set as well — HPSC 2019 paired Fleming with lysozyme and benzyl-penicillin alongside three other scientists, where a single misplaced pair loses the whole item.
A second form turns on the surname instead of the discovery. CAPF 2020 and NDA 2022 both asked about Fleming's left- and right-hand rules, which belong to John Ambrose Fleming.
HPSC_2019_PRE_GSII_Q422019The same credit is being tested: that item pairs Alexander Fleming with the enzyme lysozyme and benzyl-penicillin. What differs is the form — it is a four-pair matching set that also carries Pasteur, Rutherford and Roentgen, so one wrong pairing costs the whole item, while here a single name settles the mark.
CAPF_GAI_2020_Q32020Same surname, different person and different subject: that item asks about Fleming's left-hand and right-hand rules in electromagnetism, which are named after John Ambrose Fleming. The shared word is only the surname; the subject the question sits in is what decides which Fleming is meant.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Alexander Fleming shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for penicillin with:
- (a)Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
- (b)Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch
- (c)Selman Waksman and Paul Ehrlich
- (d)Walther Flemming and Wilhelm Waldeyer
Answera — Florey and Chain purified penicillin at Oxford and proved it cured infections, and the prize was awarded jointly to them with Fleming.Pasteur died in 1895, before the Nobel Prizes began, and Koch's prize was in 1905 for tuberculosis work. Waksman was recognised in 1952 for streptomycin and Ehrlich in 1908 for immunity. Flemming and Waldeyer were nineteenth-century cytologists.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The word 'cell' entered biology from which observation?
- (a)A mould clearing bacterial colonies on a culture plate
- (b)A thin slice of cork seen through a compound microscope
- (c)Stained nuclei examined during cell division
- (d)Moving 'animalcules' seen in a drop of pond water
Answerb — Robert Hooke saw box-like compartments in cork and called them cells, describing them in Micrographia in 1665.The plate in option (a) is Fleming's 1928 penicillin observation. Stained dividing nuclei belong to Flemming's work on mitosis. Leeuwenhoek's animalcules were living microorganisms, a different observation that did not give biology this term.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Fleming's right-hand rule, used to find the direction of induced current, is named after:
- (a)Alexander Fleming, the bacteriologist
- (b)John Ambrose Fleming, the electrical engineer
- (c)Walther Flemming, who described mitosis
- (d)Wilhelm Waldeyer, who named the chromosome
Answerb — the left-hand and right-hand mnemonics in electromagnetism are named after John Ambrose Fleming, an electrical engineer whose work included the thermionic valve.Alexander Fleming's field was bacteriology, and penicillin and lysozyme are his. Walther Flemming and Waldeyer both worked on the cell nucleus, which is neither electromagnetism nor bacteriology.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which one of the following pairs is correctly matched?
- (a)E. J. Butler — discovery of penicillin
- (b)Robert Hooke — introduction of the term chromosome
- (c)Alexander Fleming — discovery of lysozyme
- (d)Walther Flemming — invention of the thermionic valve
Answerc — Fleming described lysozyme, an antibacterial enzyme found in secretions such as nasal mucus and tears, publishing it in 1922, several years before the penicillin plate.Penicillin is Fleming's, not Butler's, whose field was fungal disease in plants. The term chromosome came from Waldeyer, not Hooke, who gave biology the word cell. The thermionic valve was John Ambrose Fleming's, not Walther Flemming's.