Australian Silver Proof Dollars |
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1998 Howard Florey.9999 Fine Silver |
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| The 1998 $1 Fine Silver Proof Coin captured the tenacity of
Howard Florey and his research team in their efforts to make antibiotics available.
Australian pathologist and co discoverer of penicillin. Born in Adelaide, Australia, and
educated in medicine at the University of Adelaide, he later studied and taught in England.
In 1935 he was appointed director of the Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford.
Florey studied naturally occurring antibacterials, of which the Penicillium mold discovered
by Sir Alexander Fleming seemed the most promising. In 1939 Florey and the German-British
biochemist Ernst Boris Chain isolated the active agent, penicillin, from a fraction of the
mold and formulated procedures for extraction and production. With British industries
affected by World War II, Florey took his process to the United States, where private and
government laboratories produced sufficient quantities to combat bacterial infection in
wounded soldiers. For his work he was knighted in 1944, shared the Nobel Prize in
physiology or medicine in 1945 with Chain and Fleming, was elected president of the Royal
Society in 1960, and was created a life peer in 1965. |
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Intricately frosted against a mirror-finish background, the detailed portrait of Florey will create a stunning addition to any collection. On the obverse of the coin appears the new effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, by Ian Rank-Broadley. |
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