Experiment eleven: Deceit and betrayal in the discovery of the cure for tuberculosis by Peter Pringle – review

The story of the lone heroic medical researcher who conquers a terrible disease is a cherished archetype: the long struggle, the countless unproductive experiments, the risk to the researcher, and above all that solitary, driven quest. We love this narrative so much that we will it into being, often at odds with the truth. One name, Alexander Fleming, will always be synonymous with penicillin, but for 13 years after Fleming discovered it, penicillin was going nowhere. The effective drug derived from that famous mould was developed under wartime pressure by a large team headed by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain. All three were rightly awarded the Nobel prize, but it doesn't matter how often I or anyone else says this, in the popular imagination the word penicillin will always conjure up Fleming and that stray contaminated Petri dish left on a lab bench.