Sir Edward Abraham's contribution to the development of the cephalosporins: a reassessment

This paper is based on an invited lecture given at the 21st International Congress of Chemotherapy in July 1999, as part of a Symposium entitled '50 years of cephalosporins: their use the next 50 years', (Hamilton-Miller JMT, Cephalosporins: from mould to drug. Sardinia to Oxford and beyond, J Antimicr Chemother 1999;44(A):26). Celebration of this Golden Anniversary was made more poignant by the death of the last major participant, Sir Edward Abraham, in May 1999. This history has been told before, but mainly by Sir Edward, who being a very modest man (to which his obituaries graphically attest) consistently underplayed the role that he and Newton had in the discovery of cephalosporin C, that led to all the cephalosporins now in use. I had the privilege of working at the Dunn School from 1967 to 1970, with Abraham and Newton, where I met Brotzu, Florey and Dorothy Hodgkin, all of whom had important roles in this story. Other workers at the Dunn School at that time, e.g. Heatley, Sanders and Jennings (who became Lady Florey), helped develop penicillin. Such a galaxy of stars of the antibiotic firmament will never again be assembled. "Let us now praise famous men... these were honoured in their generation, and were the glory of their times" - Ecclesiasticus XLIV. vv 1.7.