Edward Penley Abraham was born in 1913 in South View Road, Shirley.
A blue plaque is displayed on the house near the current site of King Edward VI School. He attended from 1924, but at that time it was in situated in Havelock Road. The BBC Radio Solent and South Today offices are on the site today.
Edward’s father was a customs and excise officer at Southampton docks.
The accidental discovery by Dr. Alexander Fleming of a mouldy petri-dish in 1928 started a long journey to develop the world’s first mass produced drug that could clear a bacterial infection. However, penicillin was labelled a laboratory curiosity and Fleming gave up his attempts to purify and produce it.
It was not till 1937 that Howard Florey and Ernst Chain uncovered Fleming’s research. They assembled a team of scientists to work solely on the ‘Penicillin Project’.
After leaving King Edward VI School, Abraham gained a first in Chemistry at The Queen’s College, Oxford and then completed his doctorate. During his research, he was the first to crystallise lysozyme, an enzyme discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming and shown to have antibacterial properties.
He then won a Rockefeller scholarship and spent a year in Stockholm at the Biokemiska Institut.
Abraham joined Oxford’s Sir William Dunn School of Pathology and became part of a research team led by Sir Howard Florey. It was responsible for the development of penicillin and later of cephalosporin, an antibiotic capable of destroying penicillin-resistant bacteria.
In 1940 Edward discovered penicillinase as the cause of bacterial resistance to antibiotics such as penicillin.
The Oxford team approached British pharmaceutical companies to manufacture penicillin. However, the team had to take penicillin to the USA in hope of finding a way to scale up production.
In 1946 penicillin became available for the first time in the UK for public use, ushering in the age of antibiotics.
In 1948 Sir Edward became one of the first ‘penicillin’ research Fellows at Lincoln College, Oxford. In 1964 he became Professor of Chemical Pathology until his retirement in 1980.
Abraham’s work resulted in the first commercially sold cephalosporin antibiotic, named Cefotin. There are now five generations of the drug, which is among the few remaining antibiotics for the treatment of MRSA.
Through the registration of a patent on cephalosporin, Abraham was able to generate a regular income, which he devoted to the establishment of a charitable trust for the support of biomedical research. The combined endowment of these charities is around £200 million. The Oxford Molecular Pathology Institute, completed in 2011, is largely funded by proceeds from Abraham’s patents.
He won many awards in his lifetime, including becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1958, gaining a Royal Medal and a CBE IN 1973, and being made a Knight Batchelor in 1980. He was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973.
Ernst Chain, Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming received a Nobel Prize in 1945 for their work on penicillin. Edward Abraham missed out as no more than three people can receive a Nobel Prize, but his contribution was just as significant.
Sir Edward and Lady Abraham lived at Badgers Wood, Oxford and part of the land is named Abraham Wood. Sir Edward Penley Abraham died in May 1999.
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