Penicillin and Luck
by Norman Heatley
Huxley Scientific Press is pleased to distribute the booklet Penicillin and Luck by Norman Heatley on behalf of his family and RCJT Books. Norman Heatley was a key member of the Oxford team under Howard Florey that developed the life-saving drug penicillin during World War II. Under the severe privations of wartime Britain, Heatley’s inventiveness and ingenuity in extracting and purifying penicillin (using, for example, bedpans from the Radcliffe Infirmary to grow the mould artificially) produced enough of the drug to use in the first clinical trials on humans in 1941. The team then shared its knowledge with American pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to mass-produce the drug in time for the final stages of the war. The stone memorial outside the Oxford Botanic Garden, commemorating the work of the penicillin team, concludes with the words: “All mankind is in their debt.” Without Heatley, there would have been no penicillin.
The extraordinary story of penicillin illustrates the serendipitous nature of scientific research. Penicillin and Luck is based on a talk given by Norman Heatley at Rockefeller University in 1989 on the role of luck and chance in the development of penicillin. All proceeds from the sale of the booklet will be donated to the Norman Heatley Memorial Fund, which was set up to establish a postdoctoral research award at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford, where the original penicillin work was carried out.
