This book is pretty insightful into how scientific firsts get stolen by savvy marketing teams. In this particular instance while Fleming didn't do anything with his finding and failed to discover the mechanism of action or specifics about penicillin, instead vaguely documenting an observation, Florey and his team developed analytics and mass manufacture of the penicillin molecule known as the forerunner today of beta lactams. Due to a savvy marketing strategy with St. Mary's with public letters written in newspapers to claim glory for their own institution, Fleming got credit for the discovery failing to emphasize the contributions of others and everyone else who actually determined molecular structure and synthesis/manufacture got placed in the background. Now whenever someone presents on antibiotics and says Fleming discovered penicillin, I have to suppress the nerd rage bubbling underneath from spewing out that he's a after the fact bandwagoner who received disproportionate credit.

That being said the historical credit theft shouldn't take away for how difficult the search and manufacture of a new molecule was and continues to be. Hats off to pharmaceutical companies willing to take risks on new drugs to bring to market and the scientists who make such miracles happen!