Culture plate of penicillium mould, London, England, 1963

Made:: 1963 in Greenford

maker:: Unknown

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Buy this image as a print

License this image for commercial use at Science and Society Picture Library

Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

Science Museum Group
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

One of two imitation culture plates of penicillium mould, c. 1963

This is a replica of the culture plate on which penicillin was discovered. In 1928 Alexander Fleming (1881-1995), a British bacteriologist, observed that a stray growth of Penicillium mould could affect colonies of bacteria. Around the felt-like greenish mould he noticed a sterile area where the growth of bacteria had been stopped by Penicillium. However, penicillin’s nature and potential use as an antibiotic were not immediately obvious to him and so it was not isolated or developed commercially until the early 1940s.

Details

Category:: Biotechnology

Object Number:: 1963-374/2

type:: culture plate

Cite this page

Rights

We encourage the use and reuse of our collection data.

Data in the title, made, maker and details fields are released under Creative Commons Zero

Descriptions and all other text content are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence

Using our data

Download

Download catalogue entry as json

Download manifest IIIF

Our records are constantly being enhanced and improved, but please note that we cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information shown on this website.