1928–1945 CE · observation, clinical development and mass production · Europe · Medicine
Fleming observed penicillin’s antibacterial effect in 1928; Florey, Chain, Heatley and a wider Oxford team later developed purification and testing, while British and U.S. institutions scaled production during the war.
Atlas dossier · World WarsFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
Fleming observed antibacterial effects in 1928 but did not create a practical medicine then. From 1939 the Oxford team led by Florey and including Chain and Heatley developed methods for purification, animal experiments and clinical use. Industrial and government collaboration later made wartime mass production possible.
Science Museum: How was penicillin developed? ↗Penicillin treated susceptible bacterial infections; it did not work against viruses or every bacterium. Supply was initially scarce and access unequal. Resistance appeared early, so the 1945 Nobel milestone closes this development survey without claiming that antibiotic research or stewardship was complete.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945 ↗A visual presentation accompanying this entry. Read each image’s attribution to distinguish archival records, later depictions and reconstructions.
Rights-cleared archival or official image · CC BY-SA 3.0
Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum.jpg — Denise León; CC BY-SA 3.0; via Wikimedia Commons
Source and reuse terms ↗ · Read the licence ↗Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
Elsewhere in the world
1929–late 1930s CE · uneven global depression and recovery · GlobalGreat DepressionBanking crises, debt, deflation, the gold standard and collapsing demand and trade transmitted a deep depression through an unequal world economy.
1931–1945 CE · Manchurian seizure, war in China and wider Pacific conflict · AsiaThe Asia-Pacific War and NanjingJapan seized Manchuria in 1931; full-scale war with China followed in 1937 and merged with the wider Pacific war after 1941. In late 1937 and early 1938, Japanese forces perpetrated mass killing, sexual violence, looting and terror against civilians and disarmed soldiers in Nanjing.
1930s–1945 CE · selected theory, measurement and policy milestones · GlobalMacroeconomics, national accounts and welfare statesThe Depression and wartime planning accelerated several connected developments: Keynes’s aggregate-demand framework, Kuznets and others’ national-income accounts, and country-specific programmes for employment, social insurance and economic stabilization.