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Lord Howard Florey
Lord Howard Florey (1898–1968)
Howard Florey was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He was a scientist who won a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England and later became a professor there.
Florey is famous because he developed the medicine penicillin in the 1940s. Before then, many people had died of infections, even from small injuries. With penicillin they could be cured. Many people are alive now because of Florey's medicine.
He was the first Australian to become the president of the Royal Society of Medicine and won a Nobel Prize for his work in 1945. This is only given to a few people in the world each year. In 1965, he was made Lord Florey by Queen Elizabeth II.
A suburb of Canberra is named after him and his face is on the $50 note.