Scottish researcher Alexander Fleming didn't need to develop a strategy to discover penicillin. In the summer of 1928, before embarking on a 2-week holiday, he accidentally left a petri dish smeared with staphylococcus bacteria uncovered on his lab bench. While he vacationed at his family's country home in Suffolk, England, a warm spell settled on Oxford, and the flourishing bacteria covered the dish's gel in a thick lawn. Yet Fleming noticed upon his return that some tiny specks on the gel's surface were surrounded by clear halos where bacteria had died. Spores from an obscure mold had probably drifted up from a mycology lab one floor below, landed on the gel, and secreted a bacteria-killing goo—which was later identified as an antibiotic.
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