Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum

Making medical history

Address:

Praed Street - St Mary's Hospital
W2 1NY - Bayswater/Paddington
London

Nearest Bus or Train:

Paddington

Open Hours:

10a-1p M-Th, By appointment: 2p-5p M-Th & 10a-5p F

In 1928 a young Scot named Alexander Fleming made a chance discovery which was to prove one of the most significant medical advances of the last century. This little museum in the archives of St Mary's Hospital sits on the actual site of the laboratory where Fleming made his discovery of penicillin. It features an exhibition, a reconstruction of his working environment and a video which narrates the extraordinary story. Amazingly, the scientific community ignored Fleming's work for more than a decade before a group of chemists in Oxford came up with a way of purifying penicillin. Fleming's perseverance eventually earned him a Nobel prize, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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