Howard Florey

Joseph Florey's first wife was Charlotte Ames, with whom he had two daughters, Charlotte, who was born in 1880, and Anne, who was born in 1882.

After his wife contracted pulmonary tuberculosis, the family emigrated to South Australia, where it was hoped that the climate would be more congenial.

Her health gradually declined and she died in April 1886.

Joseph Florey established his own bootmaking business in Adelaide, and married Bertha Mary Waldham, the daughter of his housekeeper.

Their first child together, Hilda, was born on 6 September 1890.

She became a bacteriologist and a pioneer of laboratory medicine.

A second daughter, Valetta, was born in 1891.

Thus, Florey had two older sisters and two older half-sisters.

Howard Walter Florey, Baron Florey, (24 September 1898 – 21 February 1968) was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming for his role in the development of penicillin.

Although Fleming received most of the credit for the discovery of penicillin, it was Florey and his team at the University of Oxford who made it into a useful and effective drug, ten years after Fleming had abandoned its development.

They developed techniques for growing, purifying and manufacturing the drug, tested it for toxicity and efficacy on animals, and carried out the first clinical trials.

Howard Walter Florey was born in Malvern, a southern suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, on 24 September 1898.

His surname rhymes with "sorry".

He was the only son of Joseph Florey, a bootmaker from Oxfordshire in England, who as a boy moved to London where Florey's grandfather established a bootmaking business.

In 1906, the family moved to "Coreega", a mansion in the Adelaide suburb of Mitcham.

Florey attended Unley Park School, a local private school, taking the 2 mi trip to school each day in a horse-drawn tram with Mollie Clampett, a friend who lived in the rectory adjacent to Coreega.

At school he acquired the lifelong nickname "Floss", this being, like "Florrie", a common diminutive form of "Florence".

He transferred to Kyre College, a private boys' school, in 1908.

In 1911, he entered St Peter's College, Adelaide, where he excelled in chemistry, physics, mathematics and history.

He played various sports for the school: cricket, Australian football, tennis, and track and field athletics as a sprinter and high jumper.

The cost of his education was covered by four scholarships.

After the First World War broke out in 1914, he wished to enlist, but parental permission was required and was not forthcoming.

He was head boy in his final year at school, and was ranked twelfth in the state in his final examinations.

Rather than become a businessman like his father, Florey elected to follow in the footsteps of his sister Hilda, who studied medicine.

He served in the Senior Cadets, in which he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in August 1916.

He entered the University of Adelaide in March 1917, his fees paid entirely by a state scholarship.

This allowed him to continue his studies after his father died from a heart attack on 15 September 1918, and the shoe company was found to be insolvent and went into liquidation.

Coreega and other properties had to be sold, and in 1920, the family moved into a bungalow in Glen Osmond.

In 1935, he became the director of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford.

He assembled a multidisciplinary staff that could tackle major research projects.

In addition to his work on penicillin, he researched many other subjects, most notably lysozyme, contraception and cephalosporins.

In 1941, they used it to treat a police constable from Oxford.

He started to recover, but subsequently died because Florey was unable, at that time, to make enough penicillin.

Later trials in Britain, the United States and North Africa were highly successful.

A graduate of the University of Adelaide, Florey studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and in the United States on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation.

He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1941, and as its president from 1960 to 1965, he oversaw its move to new accommodations at Carlton House Terrace and the establishment of links with European organisations.

In 1962, he became provost of The Queen's College, Oxford.

Florey's discoveries are estimated to have saved over 80 million lives, and he is regarded by the Australian scientific and medical community as one of its greatest figures.

Australian prime minister Sir Robert Menzies said, "In terms of world well-being, Florey was the most important man ever born in Australia."

He was involved in the founding of the Australian National University in Canberra and the establishment of its John Curtin School of Medical Research, and he served as chancellor of the Australian National University from 1965 until his death in 1968.