Sir Edward Penley Abraham, CBE, FRS[3] (10 June 1913 – 8 May 1999) was an English biochemist instrumental in the development of the first antibiotics penicillin and cephalosporin.

From 1924 Abraham attended King Edward VI School, Southampton, before achieving a First in Chemistry at The Queen's College, Oxford.

[6] Abraham completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Sir Robert Robinson, during which he was the first to crystallise lysozyme,[1][7] an enzyme discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming and shown to have antibacterial properties, and was later the first enzyme to have its structure solved using X-ray crystallography, by Lord David Phillips.

[10] In October 1943 Abraham and Sir Ernst Boris Chain proposed a novel beta-lactam structure with a fused two ring system.

[12][13] Florey formally recognised Abraham's work in 1948 by nominating him to be one of the first three "penicillin" research Fellows at Lincoln College, Oxford.

[14] Abraham and Guy Newton purified the antibiotics from this fungus and found one, cephalosporin C, was not degraded by penicillinase and hence able to cure infections from penicillin-resistant bacteria.

[15][16] During a skiing holiday in 1958 Abraham conceived the structure of cephalosporin C,[17] which he then went on to establish with Newton,[18] and was confirmed by Dorothy Hodgkin through X-ray crystallography.