History of Antibiotics Timeline, 1902 to 2012

Key points from the timeline

• The chart covers 38 antibiotic drug classes, from salicylates (first reported 1902) to diarylquinolines (introduced 2012).
• Penicillin was found by Alexander Fleming in 1928 but was not introduced until 1943, after years of work to scale up production.
• Tetracyclines, macrolides, pyridinamides, (fluoro)quinolones and ethambutol reached clinical use in the same year they were reported.
• Pleuromutilins took longest, from 1951 to 2007, because early versions had toxic side effects in humans.
• A shaded band marks “The Golden Age of Antibiotics”, roughly 1940 to 1970 on the chart.

All figures are from the graphic, which cites Hutchings, Truman and Wilkinson (2019).

The antibiotics timeline in text

Title: Antibiotics: time from discovery to introduction. Subtitle: The timespan between when each antibiotic drug class was discovered and when it was first in clinical use. Legend: Year discovered (teal end of each bar), Year introduced (dark blue end). The x axis runs from 1900 to 2020.

Note beside penicillins: “Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but took 15 years to scale up. US scientists spent years searching for a fungal strain that could produce penicillin more efficiently. Further work to improve manufacturing led to its introduction in 1943.”

Note beside tetracyclines, macrolides and pyridinamides: “Several antibiotics were rapidly translated from discovery to clinical use, such as tetracyclines, pyridines, and macrolides, introduced within a year of discovery. This reflects the intensity of research during the Golden Age of Antibiotics.”

Note beside pleuromutilins: “Pleuromutilins were discovered in the 1950s and initially used in animal medicine. But they had toxic side effects in humans, so their development was shelved. Researchers finally succeeded with retapamulin in 2007.”

The chart prints no year labels on the bars. The years below come from the creator’s published chart file on GitHub [2], read from the bar positions, and match the graphic.

Footer: Source: Hutchings, Truman, Wilkinson (2019) Antibiotics: past, present and future. Note: Only shown for antibiotic drug classes that have been introduced clinically. As of 2023, no new classes have become available; see AntibioticDB for more. OurWorldinData.org, licensed under CC BY by the author Saloni Dattani.

How the Golden Age of Antibiotics began

Saloni Dattani’s article for Our World in Data, which this chart comes from, traces modern antibiotics to Paul Ehrlich’s work on dyes. In 1910 he identified salvarsan, the first effective treatment for syphilis and the first synthetic antibiotic used in medicine; it is an arsphenamine, the second row of the chart [1].

Fleming observed in 1928 that a mould killed bacteria on a contaminated Petri dish. Scaling up penicillin took years: the US Office of Scientific Research and Development and the Department of Agriculture searched for a higher yielding fungal strain, which was found growing on a cantaloupe. Enough penicillin reached the military and some civilians in 1943, and the American public by 1945 [1].

Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz then found streptomycin by screening soil bacteria called actinomycetes. That screening approach led to tetracyclines, macrolides and many others, which is why so many bars in the 1940s and 1950s are short [1]. The article dates the Golden Age from the early 1940s to the mid 1960s [1].

Why new antibiotic classes slowed down

By the 1970s the pipeline had slowed sharply. The article gives three reasons: drug companies moved to more profitable treatments for chronic disease, new antibiotics tend to be held back for severe resistant infections, which is a small market, and screening kept finding compounds that were already known [1]. Only nine classes on the chart were introduced from 1970 onwards (our count), and the most recent, diarylquinolines, arrived in 2012.

Notes on this infographic

• The penicillin bar starts at 1929 in the creator’s chart file [2], the year Fleming published his work, while the note on the graphic says 1928, when he made the observation. Both dates are correct for what they describe.
• The article says only 8 new classes have been approved since 1970 [1]; counting the chart’s bars from 1970 gives 9, because phosphonates arrived in 1971. The difference comes from the cut-off year used.
• The chart shows antibiotic classes, not individual drugs. A class can contain many drugs introduced over later decades.
• The footer statement that no new classes were available “as of 2023” is the creator’s; we have not checked approvals after that date.
• The graphic’s own labels use the word “discovered”; we have kept them as printed.

Questions about the history of antibiotics

When were antibiotics invented?

The first synthetic antibiotic used in medicine was salvarsan, identified by Paul Ehrlich in 1910 [1]. The chart’s earliest class, salicylates, was first reported in 1902 but not introduced until 1943.

Did Alexander Fleming discover penicillin?

Yes. Fleming noticed in 1928 that a mould on a contaminated Petri dish killed bacteria, which was penicillin [1]. Turning it into a medicine took a team effort in Britain and the United States, and it was introduced in 1943 [1].

When did antibiotics become available to the public?

Salvarsan was in use from 1910 and sulfonamides from 1936, according to the chart. Penicillin reached the military and some civilians in 1943 and was widely available to the American public by 1945 [1].

Sources

1. Saloni Dattani, What was the Golden Age of Antibiotics, and how can we spark a new one?, Our World in Data, 23 December 2024. The article this chart comes from.
2. Our World in Data, Antibiotic drugs chart scripts and files, GitHub (owid/notebooks, SaloniDattani/Antibiotic-drugs).
3. Hutchings, Truman and Wilkinson, Antibiotics: past, present and future, Current Opinion in Microbiology, 2019. Data source named on the graphic.

Last reviewed 30 October 2026