We have had the thread on the Greatest Ever Scot, most members nominated someone, Scottish Television ran this contest last year and Robert Burns won it.
Last night I watched a drama called 'The Story of Penicillin' and a very interesting production it was.
The drama focussed on the research team at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford led by Howard Florey, Fleming had abandoned his research on penicillin a few years earlier after being unable to produce any useful of amount of penicillin from mould but Florey's team took up the challenge and successfully produced enough penicillin to first treat mice and then move on to humans.
The rest is history.
Sir Alexander Fleming, as we know was the man who discovered penicillin, a discovery that would change the world and the course of history.
He shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1945 along with researchers Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.

Robert Burns was a great man, a great poet, penning some of the most beautiful verse ever written, he gave the world many memorable and outstanding poems but did he contribute as much to humanity as the man who discovered penicillin. I am a great Burns fan and love his work and can recite a few of his poems and have done so many times at Burns Suppers but can he stand against ALexander Fleming as the Greatest Ever Scot?

Sir Henry Harris said in 1998 ' Without Fleming, no Chain; Without Chain, no Florey, no Heatley; Without Heatley, no penicillin'