Home » Society » Famous Australians » Sir Howard Walter Florey

Sir Howard Walter Florey

Sir Howard Walter Florey was an Australian pharmacologist and pathologist, and was born on September 24 in 1898 at Adelaide, South Australia. In 1945, he got the Nobel Prize in physiology for his role in the making of penicillin. This award was also received by Sir Ernst Boris Chain and Sir Alexander Fleming. His parents were Joseph and Bertha Mary Florey.

Education

He started his premature education was at St. Peter’s Collegiate School in Adelaide. In 1921, he was completed his graduation (M.B., B.S) in Adelaide University. In 1924, Sir Howard Walter Florey was honored a Rhodes scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, leading to the degrees of B.Sc. and M.A. then he went to Cambridge as a John Lucas Walker Student. He travelled the US on a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship for a year in 1925. And in 1926, he returned to a Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Here he received his Ph.D. in 1927.

Family

He got married with Mary Ethel Hayter Reed in 1926. They have two kids and their names were Paquita Mary Joanna and Charles du V. In 1944 he was formed a Knight Bachelor.

Profession

He was worked as a Huddersfield Lecturer in Special Pathology at Cambridge in 1927. He flourished to the Joseph Hunter Chair of Pathology at the University of Sheffield in 1931 and he became Professor of Pathology and a Fellow of Lincoln College in Oxford in 1935. In 1946 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1952. In 1962 he was made Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford.

Awards

During World War II he was selected as Honorary Consultant in Pathology to the Army. He develops as Nuffield Visiting Professor to Australia and New Zealand in 1944. Lysozyme is an antibacterial material found in saliva and human tears, was their original interest. But their interest moved to substances now known as antibiotics. The work on penicillin was a result of this interest. Penicillin had been exposed by Fleming in 1928 as a result of observations on a mould which developed on some germ culture plates but the active substance was not isolated.