By Brad Dison
There is an old cliché that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That was certainly true with Alex’s paintings. Alex dabbled in watercolor painting, but despite his numerous attempts his paintings were considered unspectacular. Newspapers described Alex in much the same way, “patient, persevering, methodical, and unspectacular.” Alex had no delusions that he would someday become an artist whose works were put on display for others to see, yet it happened.
Art was only a hobby for Alex. He was a scientist. Artists use a variety of media in their approach to artistic expression. Sometimes that medium is as unconventional as dryer lint, used bubblegum, or grains of rice. Alex began experimenting with his own medium and painted ballerinas, houses, soldiers, mothers feeding children, portraits, stick figures fighting, and many other scenes by using bacterial microbes. The difficult process began with Alex growing bacterial microbes in a petri dish which produced different natural pigments. He filled another petri dish with agar, a gelatinous substance created from algae. He dipped his lab tool into the microbes and carefully placed them into the agar. Painting with microbes was difficult because the varieties of microbes matured at different times. Alex painted with one variety of microbes, waited the predetermined length of time, then added the next batch of microbes which produced a different color, and the process continued. Once he was satisfied, he placed his raw petri dish into an incubator to allow them to grow into his unusual works of art.
Alex was pleased with his creations, but he was limited to just a few colors. Most of his microbial artworks consisted of red, black, brown, and yellow pigments. Alex wanted to see if he could create more colors if he left his mixture out of the incubator. When he checked on the petri dish a few days later, he noticed mold growing on it. Most scientists would have thrown the sample away, but not Alex. He said, “I might have been in a bad temper and missed it.” He studied the sample and noticed that each of the colonies of bacteria on his petri dish had grown into a small shape which resembled a star in the night sky. Then he realized that the dark sky surrounding his star was dying bacteria. He initially called the substance “mold juice.” In his search for more colors for his microbial art, Alex…Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin.
Sources:
1. The Meriden Journal, March 11, 1955, p.1.
2. The Age (Melbourne, Australia), July 4, 1959, p.18.
3. Rob Dunn, “Painting with Penicillin: Alexander Fleming’s Germ Art, Smithsonian Magazine, July 11, 2010, accessed March 9, 2025, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/painting-with-penicillin-alexander-flemings-germ-art-1761496/.
4. “National Treasure: The Mold Behind the Miracle of Penicillin,” National Museum of American History, November 22, 2024, accessed March 9, 2025, https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/national-treasure-mold-behind-miracle-penicillin.
