Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 after noticing that a mold contaminating one of his bacterial culture plates had killed the surrounding bacteria — the first antibiotic ever discovered, though it took until the early 1940s for Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to develop it into a usable medical treatment, work for which all three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize.
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Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928 after noticing that a mold contaminating one of his bacterial culture plates had killed the surrounding bacteria — the first antibiotic ever discovered, though it took until the early 1940s for Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to develop it into a usable medical treatment, work for which all three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize.
The year of the discovery of the first antibiotic compound.
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Permanent ID limitsregistry.com/limits/LR-FIRST-ANTIBIOTIC
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Limits Registry. LR-FIRST-ANTIBIOTIC. First antibiotic discovered. 2026.