Although Howard Florey spent most of his life abroad, he was a great Australian and according to his biographer probably the most effective medical scientist since Joseph Lister.

Professor R.G. MacFarlane has written an account of Florey’s life which is deserving of a wide readership in Australia. He concentrates on Florey’s career from its beginnings in Adelaide through to Oxford where he was leader of a team which developed penicillin. A useful ‘Epilogue’ completes the picture by reminding us that after Florey’s emergence as one of the world’s great scientists at the age of 44, he went on to be knighted, elected president of the Royal Society, become Provost of Queens College, Oxford, and enter the House of Lords as Baron Florey of Adelaide and Marston.