Rhodes scholar from Adelaide University, Howard Florey makes penicillin required to save millions of lives

A Rhodes scholar from Adelaide University, Howard Florey, 1945 Nobel laureate for medicine, as previously featured on the Australian $50 note

Howard Walter Florey, pharmacologist and pathologist, shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1945 with Ernst Boris Chain and Alexander Fleming, for his role in making penicillin.

Although Fleming is credited with discovering penicillin, Florey made penicillin available in quantities that saved millions of lives. Florey and his team made a useful and effective drug out of penicillin, after the task had been abandoned as too difficult.

Florey did the first trials on penicillin in 1941 at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. His team enabled large-scale production of the mould. By 1945, penicillin was processed industrially for the Allies in World War II.

Howard Florey was born in Adelaide, the youngest of eight children. He was educated at Kyre College Preparatory School (later Scotch College) and St Peter's College. Studying medicine at the University of Adelaide (1917-21), he met Ethel Reed, another student, who became his wife and colleague.

As a Rhodes Scholar, Florey studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. He later received a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Florey was made a knight bachelor in 1944; awarded the Lister Medal in 1945 for contributions to surgical science; elected to the Royal Society in 1941 and its president in 1958.

In 1965, he became Baron Florey of Adelaide in the State of South Australia and Commonwealth of Australia and of Marston in the County of Oxford.