We all know the story of how Alexander Fleming went on vacation in 1928 and left colonies of the bacteria staphylococci in his lab. When he returned, he found that one dish was contaminated with Penicillium fungus, and that it had killed the staph near it. That event led to the world's first antibiotic, penicillin. Fleming won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1945.
But in 1949, scientists discovered an 1897 doctoral thesis by French scientist Ernest Duchesne that pretty much made the same discovery. Duchesne found an antagonistic relationship between funguses and bacteria. He experimented with introducing E. coli and (separately) the typhus bacteria into guinea pigs along with the fungus Penicillium glaucum. While the pigs became ill, they recovered quickly, and in subsequent experiments they did not become ill. Duchesne urged further research on the therapeutic uses of the fungus, but it didn't catch on. Crucially, Duchesne did not name the antibiotic substance produced by the fungus Penicillium glaucum, and Fleming did.
However, even Fleming's 1928 discovery was overlooked for years until other scientists proved that the discovery was actually useful in human healthcare. Read about Ernest Duchesne and the history of penicillin research at Amusing Planet.
(Image credit: Science History Institute)
