The Great Horizon is a biographical novel on Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. His best-known discoveries are the discovery of the enzyme lysozyme and the antibiotic substance penicillin from the mold Penicillium notatum, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.

The list of maladies that have been cured by penicillin is endless. Those that stand out are—pneumonia, meningitis, various kinds of venereal diseases, blood poisoning—to name only a few of the afflictions which are effectively treated with penicillin, not to mention more than hundred other mild to severe diseases for which it acts as the healing mechanic. Needless to say, it eradicates bacteria of countless species, even though it is quite safe for the human body.

Discovery of penicillin has come naturally as a life-giver to mankind. Disease-torn distressed humans have got a means of longevity through this life-saver. It has contributed in no less measure, to the average human longevity crossing the figure of seventies. The bright rays of the antibiotics have dispersed the dark clouds of sickness and diseases, which overcast the sky of human destiny. All this has been made possible due to the physician named Alexander Fleming who discovered it in 1928 and unfolded a new horizon.



About the Author

Debabrata Dasgupta was born in 1954 and had his education from Calcutta University (W.B.). He has chosen it as his personal mission to popularise science by spreading the knowledge about the lives and works of great scientists. In his words, “lives of great scientists alone can show us way in the present crisis of mankind”.

A teacher by profession, he is the author of more than twenty-five books on the lives and works of great scientists like Newton, Einstein, Curie, Lavoisier, Pasteur, Lister, Fleming and others. At present, he is actively engaged in teaching at M.G.M. Medical College in Jamshedpur.