Caption:

A photograph of women working in a laboratory, taken by an unknown photographer for the Daily Herald newspaper in 1946. The laboratory technicians shown here are all women. The Second World War saw an increase in women working in science and industry, jobs that had been seen until this time as traditionally male. This laboratory owned by Distillers Co Ltd at Speke, Liverpool, was, at the time, the largest penicillin plant in the world. During the Second World War two British scientists, Sir Howard Walter Florey [1898-1968] and Ernst Boris Chain [1906-1979], developed a means of producing penicillin on an industrial scale. Together with Alexander Flemming they shared the Nobel Prize in 1945. Their work on producing a 'wonder drug' saved millions of lives. This photograph has been selected from the Daily Herald Archive, a collection of over three million photographs. The archive holds work of international, national and local importance by both staff and agency photographers.