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Ernst Chain and Howard Florey found Fleming's article and began researching at Oxford University. They were able to purify penicillin, but it was a slow process and a large amount of resources yielded only a small amount of penicillin. Chain and Florey performed tests on mice and the outcomes supported their understanding of penicillin. Then, they started growing penicillin to test on humans.

Florey and Chain's Experiment

Scientists at Oxford who worked with Florey and Chain at Oxford on the Penicillin project

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The daughter of Albert Alexander holding a picture of her father during an interview

Penicillin's first patient was a police officer named Albert Alexander who developed a terrible infection solely from thorns scratching his face. He was given penicillin and his condition was improving greatly, but there wasn't enough to save him. He died, but his partial recovery supported the scientists' hypothesis. They attempted to find a better spore of penicillin but this attempt was also unsuccessful. Florey and Chain realized that they couldn't create this medicine at the level of a university laboratory.

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