Replica apparatus for the continuous extraction and purification
of penicillin Made by Norman Heatley (1911-2004) himself, a
member of the team at Oxford who were working on penicillin in
the early 1940s, this is a replica of the apparatus he built for
the continuous extraction and purification of the drug. It was
specially made for the Science Museum. The original device, made
in 1940, passed increasingly pure penicillin between solution in
acidified water and an organic solvent. Heatley was part of the
team that managed to produce enough of the antibiotic for the
first clinical trials in 1941. It was difficult to reproduce
enough of the Penicillium mould, and difficult again to gain
samples with few impurities. Heatley’s inventiveness shown both
in this device and in his design of a dish to grow the mould at
an experimental scale was of great importance to the development
of penicillin. Related Themes and Topics There are 583 related
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