134 Facts About Howard Florey

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

Howard Florey assembled a multidisciplinary staff that could tackle major research projects.

Howard Florey 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.

Howard Florey 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.

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

Howard Florey 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.

Joseph Howard 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.

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

Howard Florey became a bacteriologist and a pioneer of laboratory medicine.

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

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

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

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

Howard Florey 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, Howard Florey elected to follow in the footsteps of his sister Hilda, who studied medicine.

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

Howard Florey was an editor of the Medical Students' Society's Review and the Adelaide University Magazine.

Howard Florey decided to pursue medical research, a speciality that required study overseas.

Howard Florey insisted that he would do neither; he would take his examinations and start at Oxford at the commencement of the Hilary term in January 1922.

Howard Florey passed his examinations with second-class honours, and he was awarded his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree in absentia in December 1921.

The ship reached Hull on 24 January 1922, and Howard Florey took a train to London, where his sister Anne met him at King's Cross Station.

Howard Florey had to choose a college, and he chose to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, where his high school headmaster, Henry Girdlestone, had gone.

Howard Florey enrolled in the honour school of physiology, where he studied under the tutelage of Sir Charles Scott Sherrington.

Howard Florey became a demonstrator in the physiology department, and he applied for a fellowship in physiology at Merton College, but was passed over in favour of Gavin de Beer.

Howard Florey was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1924.

Howard Florey hoped to be able to return to the UK via Australia and marry Ethel Reed in Adelaide, but in November 1925 he accepted an offer of a research position at London Hospital.

Howard Florey managed to negotiate a delay, but only until May 1926.

Howard Florey was unhappy working at London Hospital; he disliked the long daily commute from Chobham that put his experimental work at the mercy of the railway timetable.

Howard Florey wrote up the results of the research he had done in New York on lacteals and lymphatic capillaries, which was published in the Journal of Physiology in 1927.

Howard Florey then embarked on writing a thesis for a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he became an unofficial fellow in 1926.

Howard Florey continued his work on the secretion of mucus.

Howard Florey had to teach, which he disliked, preferring research, but there was satisfaction that the new tripos course was largely designed by himself and Alan Nigel Drury.

Howard Florey arranged for Kent to be permanently assigned as his assistant, and Kent would remain in the role for the next forty years.

Two years later they spent the summer with the French histologist and endocrinologist Pol Bouin at the University of Strasbourg, where Howard Florey studied mucinogen, the chemical precursor to mucin.

In January 1929, Howard Florey began a study of lysozyme, an enzyme that forms part of the immune system in animals.

For Howard Florey this was a natural extension of his work with mucus.

Lysozyme occurs in secretions containing mucus, and Howard Florey wondered if it was a property of mucus.

Howard Florey tested various animals for its presence; dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs all had it in their secretions, but cats had very little, and goats had none, except in their tears.

Howard Florey collaborated with biochemist Marjory Stephenson on his lysozyme project, but she did not have enough time to spare for a researcher in another department, and their results were not published.

Howard Florey yearned to have an interdisciplinary team and funds for work other than his own.

The death of James Sholto Cameron Douglas on 30 October 1931 created a vacancy in the Joseph Hunter chair of pathology at the University of Sheffield, and Howard Florey decided to apply.

Howard Florey took Kent with him anyway, eventually securing 50 shillings a week for him from the Medical Research Council.

Howard Florey researched the structure and function of the lymphatic system with Pullinger, and continued his studies of contraception with Harry Carleton that had begun at London Hospital.

Howard Florey's son Charles du Ve was born in Sheffield on 11 September 1934, but for a time Howard Florey's relationship with Ethel had deteriorated to the point where they were communicating in writing and contemplating a legal separation.

The electoral board met on 22 January 1935, and Howard Florey was appointed Professor of Pathology and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, which controlled the chair, effective 1 May 1935.

Howard Florey retained Jean Orr-Ewing and Margaret Campbell-Renton, who had been working with Dreyer, and brought Kent with him.

Howard Florey hired Margaret Jennings as a gastroenterologist in October 1936, and she worked with him on his studies of mucus secretion.

Howard Florey became Florey's mistress in 1940; their affair was a poorly-kept secret.

Howard Florey appointed P J Smart as the office administrator, and she remained in the role until she retired in 1976.

Howard Florey attracted Rhodes Scholars such as Australian Brian Maegraith and Americans Robert H Ebert and Leslie Epstein to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology; other doctoral students included Peter Medawar, Gordon Sanders and Jean Taylor.

Arthur Duncan Gardner headed the MRC's Standards Laboratory, which was located on the premises, and Gardner expected that his unit would have to move out, but Howard Florey moved to keep him, as he needed a good bacteriologist.

Howard Florey arranged for Gardner to become head of his bacteriological section, with the title of reader of bacteriology in 1936.

Howard Florey wanted a biochemist on his staff, but this proved difficult.

Howard Florey tried to get Hugh Macdonald Sinclair, but Sinclair declined the offer.

Howard Florey tempered this refusal by recommending Ernst Boris Chain, one of many Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who had found sanctuary in the UK.

Heatley was happy to come, and Howard Florey was able to arrange for the MRC to fund the position.

In 1936, Howard Florey received a letter from Hilda stating that their mother Bertha had terminal cancer, so he arranged to travel to Australia with Ethel, Paquita and Charles during the summer break.

However, the team members, including Howard Florey, all worked on multiple projects at the same time.

Howard Florey was strict with his own collaborators, but gave considerable latitude to those working on other aspects of a project.

Howard Florey did not hold team meetings, although he encouraged team members to discuss issues with himself and each other, and he dropped by each laboratory nearly every day to view progress and provide suggestions.

Howard Florey developed a detailed project plan and deployed eight graduate researchers on it, including Sanders, Medawar and Taylor.

Howard Florey performed delicate surgery on rabbits to examine the effects of lymphocyte deprivation.

Howard Florey then turned to the Rockefeller Foundation for assistance, and was provided with US$1,250.

Chain and Howard Florey decided to create a large research project on antibacterial substances produced by micro-organisms that could attract long-term funding.

Howard Florey had lost interest in penicillin when he discovered that it was not a bacteriophage, but Campbell-Renton had continued to cultivate it.

On 25 May 1940, Howard Florey injected eight mice with a virulent strain of streptococcus, and then four of them with penicillin.

Howard Florey reminded his staff that as promising as their results were, a man weighed 3,000 times as much as a mouse.

Howard Florey expected that penicillin would be hailed as a breakthrough, but he was disappointed; his results aroused little interest.

Howard Florey spent the next two years attempting to generate interest in what he believed to be the most important medical discovery of the century.

Howard Florey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1941, but his work with penicillin played little part in this.

In New Haven Howard Florey met Fulton and was reunited with his children.

Howard Florey returned to Oxford in September without undertakings to produce the kilogram quantities of penicillin required for clinical trials, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought the United States into the war and infused a new urgency into penicillin production.

Howard Florey's motivation was not potential profits, but the danger of it being patented elsewhere.

Howard Florey took up the issue with Sir Henry Dale, the chairman of the Wellcome Trust and a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel to the British Cabinet, and John William Trevan, the director of the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratory, but they were adamantly opposed, as they considered the notion of researchers profiting from their work as unethical.

Ethel was placed in charge, but while Howard Florey was a consulting pathologist at Oxford hospitals and therefore entitled to use their wards and services, Ethel, to his annoyance, was accredited merely as his assistant.

Howard Florey was appalled; this could only create a public demand for penicillin when all available supplies were needed for the clinical trials.

Ethel and Howard Florey published the results of clinical trials of 187 cases of treatment with penicillin in The Lancet on 27 March 1943.

Howard Florey was asked to go to North Africa, where the North African campaign was ongoing.

Howard Florey resisted well-intentioned efforts by the War Office to grant him military rank.

Howard Florey gave lectures on penicillin, and his report contained recommendations for training of medical officers in its use.

Howard Florey considered that the source of infection in many cases was from the hospital rather than the battlefield, and advocated changes to the way that patients were treated to take advantage of the properties of penicillin.

Howard Florey argued that wounds should be cleaned and sealed up promptly.

Howard Florey's recommendations were acted upon, and the War Office established a training course for pathologists and clinicians at the Royal Herbert Hospital, which made use of film that Florey shot in North Africa.

Howard Florey arrived in Australia in August 1944 to a hero's welcome, and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine by the University of Adelaide.

Howard Florey met with Blamey; the two men got along well and chatted for several hours.

Howard Florey discovered that penicillin production was already underway in Australia at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne.

Howard Florey was full of praise for their achievement, but disturbed that they had turned to the Americans for advice instead of him.

Howard Florey returned to the UK in October 1944, collecting his children from Fulton while en route.

Howard Florey was created a Knight Bachelor on 8 June 1944, and invested by King George VI at Buckingham Palace on 4 July 1944.

Howard Florey shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Ernst Boris Chain and Alexander Fleming.

Howard Florey maintained that the penicillin project was originally driven by scientific interests, and that the medicinal discovery was a bonus.

Howard Florey always insisted that the development of penicillin was a team effort and that he received more credit than he deserved, but the team itself was his creation.

Howard Florey edited Lectures on General Pathology, which was published in 1954.

Howard Florey saw an intellectually challenging line of research, and told them to continue.

Howard Florey received a 0.5 per cent share in the last two years of his life.

Howard Florey mailed Rivett a 19-page proposal on 7 April 1945.

Howard Florey envisaged a funding body in Australia similar to the Medical Research Council in the UK.

Howard Florey never moved to Canberra, but he did accept the position of acting director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research for a five-year term commencing in May 1948 in order to establish it.

Brian Lewis had been appointed university architect, but Howard Florey hired Stephen Welsh, the professor of architecture at Sheffield University.

People were important, and Howard Florey had a fairly free hand hiring his professors.

Howard Florey recruited Hugh Ennor as his professor of biochemistry, Adrien Albert as professor of medical chemistry, and Frank Fenner as professor of microbiology.

Howard Florey visited Canberra in March 1953, but he made it clear that he did not wish to continue as acting director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, nor take up the position of director, although he reluctantly agreed to continue as an advisor.

Howard Florey was pessimistic about the project, writing home to Jennings that "it will be a miracle if this place can be given a real university atmosphere".

In November 1953, Howard Florey was informed that works would proceed as planned.

On 27 March 1958, Howard Florey ceremoniously opened the John Curtin School of Medical Research and received an honorary Doctor of Science degree along with Sir Norman Gregg.

The Royal Society was governed by a council of twenty-one fellows, and Howard Florey served on the council from 1942 to 1943, and again from 1951 to 1953, when he was vice president.

Howard Florey received the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1951 and its Copley Medal in 1957.

Howard Florey became the President of the Royal Society on 30 November 1960.

In December 1960, Howard Florey was informed that plans to build new accommodation for the Foreign Office at Carlton House Terrace had fallen though and that the Crown Estate Commissioners had suggested that the premises might be suitable for the headquarters of cultural bodies.

Howard Florey inspected the property and lodged a formal application to occupy four houses on the site, numbers 6 to 9.

Howard Florey raised the money required to realise the architect Sir William Holford's vision for the interiors.

Howard Florey pursued a more progressive and internationalist outlook for the Royal Society.

Howard Florey hosted Yuri Gagarin at a luncheon at Burlington House, and led Royal Society visits to Russia in 1965 and 1967.

Howard Florey saw that Britain's future lay in being part of the European Economic Community, and he established ties with the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the European Molecular Biology Organization and the European Space Research Organization.

Howard Florey had to vacate the university house he had occupied since 1935, which was demolished, with a new school erected on the site.

Howard Florey bought a parcel of land in Marston, Oxford, and built a house on it.

Howard Florey was succeeded by Henry Harris, a fellow Australian scientist who had been invited to study at the Sir William Dunn School by Florey in 1952 on an ANU scholarship.

Howard Florey was the first provost of Queen's College with no prior association with the college as an undergraduate, graduate researcher or fellow, and the first scientist.

Howard Florey had a lift installed to make it easier for Ethel and himself to reach the upstairs bedrooms.

Howard Florey did not live to see the first studentship awarded in 1969, and without him additional funding was not forthcoming and the money was exhausted by 1980.

Howard Florey died the day that construction work was scheduled to begin.

Howard Florey had hypertension and respiratory and heart problems, and walked with a stick.

Howard Florey travelled to Australia one more time in 1965 to give lectures on penicillin, but collapsed in Canberra and was hospitalised in Sydney.

Howard Florey refused to pay for this; if she collapsed in the United States the cost of medical care would be astronomical.

Howard Florey was awarded many honorary degrees from British and foreign universities, including University of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Howard Florey won the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1947.

Howard Florey became a commander of the French Legion of Honour in 1946 and was awarded the American Medal for Merit in 1948 and the James Smithson Medal in 1965.

Howard Florey was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society in 1963, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the following year.

Howard Florey became an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1961.

On 4 February 1965, Howard Florey was created a life peer and became Baron Howard Florey, of Adelaide in the Commonwealth of Australia and of Marston in the City of Oxford.

Howard Florey published his last scientific paper, co-written with Jennings, in 1967.

Howard Florey had written or co-written over two hundred papers.

Howard Florey died at his home at the provost's lodgings, of congestive heart failure on 21 February 1968.

Howard Florey's portrait appeared on the Australian fifty-dollar note for 22 years between 1973 and 1995.