hybrid event: Sławomir Łotysz: More than just Mykoin: The Czech origins of East European penicillin,

hybrid event: Sławomir Łotysz: More than just Mykoin: The Czech origins of East European penicillin, 19.04.2023 13:00 CET, Prague and zoom

On 19.04.2023, at 13:00 (hybrid) Lumina Quaeruntur project ““Images of science” in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945-1968” at Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, together with the Institute for History of Medicine and Foreign Languages, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and the Society for History of Medicine and Technology will host a talk by prof. Sławomir Łotysz  (Institute for the History of Science Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland) entitled More than just Mykoin: The Czech origins of East European penicillin.

This hybrid lecture will take place on Wednesday 19th of April 2023 from 1 p.m. CET (12 a.m. GMT) at the Institute for History of Medicine and Foreign Languages, U Nemocnice 4, Praha 2, room 1.20, and online in Zoom (register on eventbrite here (https://www.eventbrite.de/e/sawomir-otysz-more-than-just-mykoin-tickets-593407707427)

Abstract: 

In the summer of 1944, a research ůgroup at the B. Fragner pharmaceutical company’s laboratory in Dolní Měcholupy, near Prague, manufactured small quantities of penicillin. Working in secret from the Nazi German occupants, they were able to replicate entirely on their own the process of biosynthesis, which was previously known only to a few American and British corporations. The Mykoin BF 510, as it was designated, was used to treat Czech patriots and Soviet soldiers injured in the Prague uprising (Pražské povstání) the following May. Making Mykoin was a remarkable accomplishment for Czech scientists, but the first full-scale Czechoslovak penicillin factory, which opened in Roztoky in the fall of 1949, was supplied by UNRRA and used technology developed during the war in the West. In this talk, after briefly explaining how Mykoin was developed, I will detail the origins of the Penicillin Plant Programme, under which UNRRA provided five penicillin factories to Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Belarus, and Ukraine. I will argue that Czech antibiotic expertise accumulated while working on Mykoin was essential in initiating the Penicillin Plant Programme and formulating its assumptions and aims. Furthermore, the practical expertise of Czech specialists was critical in keeping the entire program from failing. They not only identified flaws in the original factory design, but also supported other countries in starting production through scientific and technical assistance. This paper assesses the non-obvious flows of expertise during a period when political upheaval prevents or considerably impedes the regular movement of knowledge. Breaking established links between institutions and people can be particularly damaging in domains where tacit knowledge is critical, such as penicillin research and manufacture. This analysis challenges the usual notion of centre-periphery dynamics by introducing new actors to the epistemology of early biomedicine.

The paper is based on author’s book Welfare Factory. Penicillin behind the Iron Curtain, 1945-1954 (in Polish: Fabryka z darów. Penicylina za żelazną kurtyną 1945-1954. Warsaw: Aspra JR, 2020). The book’s Table of Contents can be found here http://lotysz.webd.pl/welfare-factory/ and a review published in Open Access in HoST – Journal of History of Science and Technology is available here https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2022-0009

The research was funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, under grant number 2014/13/B/HS3/04951.