Sir, – Further to your article on the appointment of Prof Hugh Brady as the president of Imperial College London (Education, September 8th), Alexander Fleming was not associated with Imperial College. In fact it was Ernst Chain, who shared the Nobel Prize with Fleming and Howard Florey (and who is credited with recognising the therapeutic properties of penicillin largely ignored by Fleming), who was the first professor of biochemistry at Imperial College
Chain also built a house in Mayo. He loved Ireland and spent much of his later life holidaying in Mayo, where he died in 1979. A street in Castlebar bears his name. – Yours, etc,
JULIA CHAIN,
London.