Penicillin, the first antibiotic, was discovered in 1928 by:
- A.Joseph Lister
- B.Alexander Fleming
- C.Jonas Salk
- D.Robert Koch
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, Alexander Fleming. Fleming noticed in 1928 that a mould of the genus Penicillium had killed the bacteria growing around it on a culture plate, and the substance he named penicillin became the first antibiotic; Florey and Chain later turned it into a usable drug and shared the Nobel Prize with him. Option A is wrong because Joseph Lister introduced antiseptic surgery using carbolic acid, which prevents infection during an operation rather than curing one. Option C is wrong because Jonas Salk developed the injectable polio vaccine in the 1950s, a vaccine and not an antibiotic. Option D is wrong because Robert Koch identified disease causing bacteria but did not find a drug against them. A vaccine prevents a disease and an antibiotic kills bacteria already in the body, and papers test that distinction.
Read the full article: Inventions and Inventors: Pairs, Years and Exam PYQs
Practice Questions
View allWhat did Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discover?
- A.Conservation of electric charge
- B.Electric bulb
- C.X-Rays
- D.Thermodynamics
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Roentgen, a German physicist, noticed in 1895 that a screen in his darkened laboratory glowed while a covered discharge tube was running, and he named the unknown radiation X-rays.
Read the full explanation →Who is called the father of immunology?
- A.Robert Koch
- B.Louis Pasteur
- C.Edward Jenner
- D.Karl Landsteiner
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In 1796 Jenner showed that material from a cowpox sore protected a boy against smallpox, the first deliberate vaccination, and the word vaccine itself comes from vacca, the Latin for cow.
Read the full explanation →Which one of the following pairs is NOT correctly matched?
- A.Vitamin A - McCollum
- B.Vitamin B - McCollum
- C.Vitamin C - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
- D.Vitamin D - Paul Muller
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Paul Hermann Muller is remembered for showing that DDT kills insects, work for which he received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; vitamin D is associated with Edward Mellanby, who linked its absence to rickets, and with Adolf Windaus, who worked out its chemistry.
Read the full explanation →Who is credited with the invention of the telephone?
- A.Samuel Morse
- B.Alexander Graham Bell
- C.Guglielmo Marconi
- D.Thomas Alva Edison
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Bell received the patent for the telephone in 1876 and made the first call over a wire, carrying the human voice itself rather than a code.
Read the full explanation →Dynamite, whose inventor endowed a set of international prizes, was invented by:
- A.Alfred Nobel
- B.Rudolf Diesel
- C.Michael Faraday
- D.James Watt
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The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patented dynamite in 1867, a safe way of handling nitroglycerine, and the fortune he made from explosives endowed the Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901.
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