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Joseph Lister
Joseph Lister did not discover a new drug but he made the relationship between lack of cleanliness in hospitals and deaths after operations. For this reason, he is known as the ‘Father of Antiseptic Surgery’. Lister experimented with the antibacterial action on human tissue with what he called Penicillium glaucium -
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur's pupil Paul Vuillemin coined the word antibiotic came from the word antibiosis which means a process by which life could be used to destroy life. Pasteur postulated that bacteria could kill other bacteria (anthrax bacilli). -
Rudolf Emmerich and Oscar Low
German doctors, Rudolf Emmerich and Oscar Low were the first to make an effective medication that they called pyocyanase from microbes. It was the first antibiotic to be used in hospitals. However, the drug often did not work. -
Sir Alexander Flemming
On the morning of September 3rd, 1928, Professor Alexander Fleming was having a clear up of his cluttered laboratory. Fleming was sorting through a number of glass plates which had previously been coated with staphyloccus bacteria as part of research Fleming was doing. One of the plates had mould on it. The mould was in the shape of a ring and the area around the ring seemed to be free of the bacteria staphyloccus. The mould was penicillium notatum. Thus forming Penicillium. -
Gerhard Domagk
Prontosil, the first sulfa drug, was discovered in 1935 by German chemist Gerhard Domagk (1895–1964). -
Howard Florey and Ernst Chain
The manufacturing process for Penicillin G Procaine was invented by Howard Florey (1898–1968) and Ernst Chain (1906–1979). Penicillin could now be sold as a drug. Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for medicine for their work on penicillin. -
Selman Waksman
In 1943, American microbiologist Selman Waksman (1888–1973) made the drug streptomycin from soil bacteria, the first of a new class of drugs called aminoglycosides. Streptomycin could treat diseases like tuberculosis, however, the side effects were often too severe. -
Lloyd Conover
Tetracycline was patented by Lloyd Conover, which became the most prescribed broad spectrum antibiotic in the United States. -
1st “bug” to become resistant to penicillin
The first bug to battle penicillin was Staphylococcus aureus. -
SmithKline Beecham
SmithKline Beecham patented Amoxicillin or amoxicillin/clavulanate potassium tablets, and first sold the antibiotic in 1998 under the tradenames of Amoxicillin, Amoxil, and Trimox. Amoxicillin is a semisynthetic antibiotic.
