New games! PlayTrivia andBirthle.

BIOLOGIST

Alexander Fleming

1881 - 1955

Photo of Alexander Fleming

Icon of person Alexander Fleming

Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) was a Scottish physician and microbiologist, best known for discovering the world's first broadly effective antibiotic substance, which he named penicillin. His discovery in 1928 of what was later named benzylpenicillin (or penicillin G) from the mould Penicillium rubens is described as the "single greatest victory ever achieved over disease." For this discovery, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain.He also discovered the enzyme lysozyme from his nasal discharge in 1922, and along with it a bacterium he named Micrococcus Lysodeikticus, later renamed Micrococcus luteus. Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Alexander Fleming has received more than 5,079,729 page views. His biography is available in 108 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 102 in 2019). Alexander Fleming is the 4th most popular biologist, the 27th most popular biography from United Kingdom (up from 29th in 2019) and the 2nd most popular British Biologist.

Alexander Fleming is most famous for his discovery of penicillin.

Memorability Metrics

  • 5.1M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 82.10

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 108

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 16.85

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.62

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Alexander Flemings by language


Among BIOLOGISTS

Among biologists, Alexander Fleming ranks 4 out of 841. Before him are Charles Darwin, Carl Linnaeus, and Gregor Mendel. After him are Ivan Pavlov, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Luc Montagnier, Ernst Haeckel, James Watson, Karl Landsteiner, and Konrad Lorenz.

Most Popular Biologists in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1881, Alexander Fleming ranks 3. Before him are Pablo Picasso and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. After him are Pope John XXIII, Stefan Zweig, Béla Bartók, Anna Pavlova, Kliment Voroshilov, Lu Xun, Enver Pasha, Hans Kelsen, and Ludwig von Mises. Among people deceased in 1955, Alexander Fleming ranks 2. Before him is Albert Einstein. After him are Thomas Mann, James Dean, Dale Carnegie, José Ortega y Gasset, Sadako Sasaki, António Egas Moniz, Charlie Parker, Fernand Léger, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Alberto Ascari.

Others Born in 1881

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Others Deceased in 1955

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, Alexander Fleming ranks 27 out of 7,765. Before him are Alexander Graham Bell (1847), Mary I of England (1516), Alfred Hitchcock (1899), Richard I of England (1157), Charles Dickens (1812), and James Cook (1728). After him are Anne Boleyn (1501), John Maynard Keynes (1883), Mary, Queen of Scots (1542), Robert Hooke (1635), Lord Byron (1788), and Jane Austen (1775).

Others born in United Kingdom

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Among BIOLOGISTS In United Kingdom

Among biologists born in United Kingdom, Alexander Fleming ranks 2. Before him are Charles Darwin (1809). After him are Rosalind Franklin (1920), Alfred Russel Wallace (1823), Francis Crick (1916), Robert Brown (1773), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825), Christian de Duve (1917), Richard Owen (1804), Erasmus Darwin (1731), John Edward Gray (1800), and Philip Miller (1691).

British born Biologists

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous
  • DatawheelCL