Rockefeller Foundation support for the development of penicillin

Abstract

The Rockefeller Foundation is an American philanthropic organization that aimed to imbue medicine with a scientific ethos, world-wide. The objective of this study was to enhance understanding of attempts by the Rockefeller Foundation to help Howard Florey’s team to develop penicillin at the University of Oxford.

Employing a social-history methodology, the primary sources utilised included the Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts, University of Oxford; Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge; archives of the National Library of Medicine, Washington; the Rockefeller Foundation archives, New York; and the United Nations Library and Archives, Geneva.

In 1939, Howard Florey tentatively requested financial help for his research. At the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, the Foundation funded his team’s extensive investigations into the properties of penicillin, providing equipment, salaries, supplies, and a travelling fellowship. The Foundation continued to encourage the Oxford team, long after the industrial production of penicillin had begun in the USA.