"Patricia Malone","Anne Shirley Carter", "Marie Barker" : penicillin heroines, but only for two months and long long ago ...

Marie Barker, dying, refused penicillin 1943

For two months during a six year long war, North America (at least its parental and grandparental half) temporarily turned away from looking at the front page pictures of healthy young sons and grandsons in uniform in their local newspaper.

Instead, from mid August 1943 till mid October 1943, their eyes were caught by the unlikely front page pictures (unlikely for newspapers at peace as well as at war ) of very sick young females, ranging from ages of two to their early twenties.

For female pioneers of wartime penicillin, 1910 was a very good year ...

Dorothy Crowfoot , Gladys Hobby and Nancy Atkinson were about the only women who played an independent role in the development of wartime penicillin.

Many, many, other women were involved in the production of penicillin : in fact biological (natural) penicillin production and testing was often seen as women's work par excellent : but none played an important independent scientific role that I am aware of, beyond these three women.

(I do however believe that Eleanor Chaffee, Patty Malone, Anne Shirley Carter, Marie Barker, Eleanor Roosevelt and above all Mae Smith played crucial roles in turning "penicillin the war weapon" into "the penicillin of hope.")

1910 : annus mirabilis 

Interestingly, all members of our tiny trio shared another thing in common : all three were born in the same year, 1910.....