9781422277577

For a short film on modern lab workers at St. Mary’s Hospital, scan here:

Fleming attended these meetings and learned from them, but they were not the sort of occasion that really suited him. He was for the most part silent and made no conversation. If he had to report, he did so in the shortest possible way. His value was in the laboratory, not in the library. Because of this way of organizing things, it was almost impossible to tell who was responsible for the ideas that emerged. In this type of “round table” discussion, the idea that comes out at the end and on which an experiment is based might be so different from the original suggestion that no one person can claim—or deserves—the credit. Thus for the first part of his career, Fleming was forced to work as part of a team. All his work in those days was the result of the efforts of the group as a whole. It was to be twenty years before he published anything that could be said to be entirely his own.

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