The bacteriologist Alexander Fleming is recalled as one of the brightest minds in the history of science. TIME once called him “a short (5 ft. 7 in.), gentle, retiring Scot with somewhat dreamy blue eyes, fierce white hair and a mulling mind, which, when it moves, moves with the thrust of a cobra.”
But he owed some of his greatest discoveries, at least in part, to his disgusting habits. It was a tendency toward slovenliness, after all, that famously led him to stumble upon the antibiotic properties of penicillin on this day, Sept. 28, in 1928.
He had left his London lab for a two-week vacation to Scotland without bothering to clean up first. When he returned, he found the stack of dirty dishes he’d left in the sink — petri dishes smeared with Staphylococcus bacteria — and noticed an unusual mold growing on one of the dishes, which had killed the staph.
“A less observant scientist, or one more fussy about keeping a tidy laboratory, would have thrown out the adulterated growth,” TIME noted. But Fleming recognized that this particular dirty dish could change the course of medical history.
No one could accuse him of being fussy about tidiness. In fact, he was so comfortable with mold and bacteria that he used them outside the lab as well: for painting. According to Smithsonian magazine, Fleming upgraded from watercolors to bacteria in the artistic pursuits of his leisure hours, using a paint-by-numbers approach to landscapes and still lifes by “growing microbes with different natural pigments in the places where he wanted different colors.”
The unusual artistic medium gave his work the ephemeral quality of ice sculpting—but made it, literally, much livelier. And it helped hone his observational skills, setting the stage for his discovery of penicillin.
“Fleming’s discovery of the effects of penicillin, the compound produced by the fungus, was a function of his eye for the rare, an artist’s eye,” Smithsonian asserts.
It was, perhaps, a rare impulse among scientists that had also enabled Fleming’s earlier discovery of lysozyme, an antibacterial enzyme present in mucus and tears. According to Smithsonian, that finding arose spontaneously when, one day, Fleming decided to let his nose drip into a petri dish, just to see what happened. (It killed what was growing in the dish.)
Fleming’s combination of genius and grossness saved countless lives, spawned a massive pharmaceutical industry, and earned him a knighthood and the Nobel Prize — and gave messy people everywhere a new reason to take pride in their untidiness.
Read more about Fleming, here in the TIME archives: 20th Century Seer
See Original Models of the Apple I and Other Iconic American Inventions
Printing Press, 1830: Issac Adams, (Unnumbered Patent)
The style of bed and platen printing press in this patent model inspired Issac Adams’ design of the later Adams Power Press, which was praised by early 19th century printers for its production of quality book work.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryTelegraph, 1837: Samuel F. B. Morse, Prototype.
Samuel F. B. Morse converted an artist’s canvas stretcher into a telegraph receiver that recorded a message as a wavy line on a strip of paper. His telegraph transmitter sent electric pulses representing letter and numbers that activated an electromagnet on the receiver.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryViolin, 1852: William S. Mount, (Patent No. 8981).
William S. Mount proposed creating violins with concave or hollow backs. This patent model represented a design innovation that would minimize the strain on the violin soundboard and avoid interference with the “sonorous and vibrating qualities” of the instrument.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryTypewriter, 1868: C. Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden & Samuel W. Soule (Patent No. 79265).
This patent model was created by the three Milwaukee inventors who made progress towards a viable typewriting machine. Six years later, Remington & Sons produced the first commercially successful machine, bearing the names of Sholes and Glidden.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistorySewing Machine, 1873: Helen Blanchard, (Patent No. 141987).
This patent model for an improvement in sewing machines introduced the buttonhole stitch. Blanchard received some 28 patents, many having to do with sewing. She is best remembered for another overstitch sewing invention, the “zigzag.”
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryCamera Shutter, 1879: Eadweard Muybridge, (Patent No. 212865).
This “Method and Apparatus for Photographing Objects in Motion” was adapted to photographic equipment. As demonstrated with this patent model, it could produce images of subjects in rapid motion. It was used by Eadweard Muybridge in his celebrated animal locomotion photography.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryIncandescent Lamp, 1881: Thomas Edison (Patent No. 239373).
Thomas Edison submitted this model to patent a variation on his newly invented light bulb. Although he never put this design into production, this lamp could be disassembled to replace a burned-out filament.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryHigh-Strength Fiber, 1965: Stephanie Kwolek (Patent Nos. 3819587 and RE30352).
Kwolek’s 1965 discovery at DuPont of strong polymer fibers resulted in DuPont Kevlar, best known for its use in bullet-resistant body armorCourtesy Hagley Museum and LibraryApple I Computer, 1976: Steve Jobs (Patent No. 7166791) & Steve Wozniak (Patent No. 4136359). In 1976 the first form of computer designed by Stephen Wozniak and sold by Wozniak in conjunction with Steve Jobs was sold, and became a leader in personal computing. Originally marketed to hobbyists only primarily as a fully assembled circuit board; purchasers had to add their own case and monitor in order to create a working computer.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryArtificial Heart, 1977: Robert Jarvik, M.D., Prototype.
This electrohydraulic artificial heart is a prototype for what became the Jarvik-7 Total Artificial Heart, which was first implanted into a human in December 1982 at the University of Utah Medical Center. The two sides of the device are connected with Velcro.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American History
