Which Americans helped mass produce penicillin during world war 2?
In June 1941, two British scientists, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley, came to the United States carrying a small package of brown powder-penicillin. Their mission: to work with Americans to produce the drug in quantity and to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis. From Washington, D.C., they were directed to USDA’s Northern Regional Research Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, where researchers had experienced success in growing molds with a process called deep vat fermentation. One of the Peoria scientists, Andrew J. Moyer, grew the penicillin in a nutritious medium that included corn steep water, an inexpensive byproduct of the wet corn milling process. He kept adding nutrients to his medium until he had increased penicillin yields by more than 10 times. Moyer’s results encouraged four U.S. drug companies to try large-scale penicillin production. The public-private agreement came soon after Pearl Harbor.
