Scientific Advances After World War I

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Recommended: Alexander Fleming's words when he invented penicillin

After World War I, there were many advances in scientific thought. These advances were key in helping the United States of America win World War II. Alexander Fleming, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud were very important in these findings.
Alexander Fleming, a scientist from Scotland, accidentally made his scientific discovery in 1928. He discovered a type of nontoxic mold that kills bacteria (6). He named the mold penicillin. Australian pharmacologist Howard Florey and German-born Jewish refugee Ernest Chain began the real work of Fleming’s discovery in 1938 at Oxford University (1). They published results from their first experiments on mice in August of 1940. It showed that penicillin appeared nontoxic and could fight a variety of pathogens, along with other things (1).
During World War II, everyone was desperate for penicillin. In Britain, the daily bombing raids made its laboratories vulnerable to deconstruction (3). After the Japanese bombed the United States at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941, the United States was desperate for penicillin too. The United States then opened a lab in Peoria, Illinois to produce naturally fermented penicillin at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory (3). The new penicillin came from Fleming’s original mold. The penicillin was then shipped over to doctors serving injured soldiers. Penicillin was said to be a miracle according to many military surgeons (1). In the beginning of the war, surgeons tore off the bandages on soldiers’ wounds and tried to clean them. Infections were very common and usually deadly, but penicillin changed it. Now, surgeons cleaned the wounds, sprinkled penicillin over it, and stitched it closed. Most injured soldiers had a s...

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... 2014. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/192/einstein-bio.html
Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. n.p. Web. 12 February 2014. http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
Fleming Discovers Penicillin. PBS. Web. 9 February 2014. **************
Marie Curie- Biographical. Nobel Prize n.d. Web. February 2014. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prize_laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html
Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity. American Institute of Physics. Web. 12 February 2014. https://www.aip.org/history/curie/warl.htm
Medicine and World War II. Web. 9 February 2014. http://historylearningsite.co.uk/medicine_and_world_war_two.htm
The National World War II Museum. The War That Changed Your World: The Science and Technology of World War II. Web. 9 February 2014. http://www.nationalww2museum.org/index.html

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