Merlin Pryce (1902-1976) and penicillin: an abiding mystery

In the scientific and medical pantheon few have received more adulation and honour than Sir Alexander Fleming. Even so it is abundantly clear that his triumphant discovery of penicillin owed much to the work of others, especially Florey and Chain, who accomplished the difficult task of taking penicillin from the test tube to patient. This essay does not attempt a detailed re-examination of that discovery. Rather the present study suggests that even the initial observation on that critical day in September 1928 and its subsequent ramifications were even more complex and perplexing than the accepted version. It is likely that Professor Daniel Merlin Pryce, a somewhat unconventional but gifted son of the Welsh mining valleys played an important, quite possibly a crucial, role in the original observation. However one which, except for a very few occasions, he himself sought to downplay, even virtually to deny.