Sir Ernst Boris ChainBorn 19 Jun 1906; died 12 Aug 1979 at age 73. German-English biochemist who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Sir Alexander Fleming and Howard Walter Florey (later Baron Florey) for their work on penicillin. In 1928, Fleming had made the initial discovery of the antibiotic effect of penicillin. Being Jewish, Chain fled Nazi Germany to England in 1933. His varied research included phospholipids, snake venoms, tumour metabolism and lysozymes. From 1939, he worked with Florey on natural antibacterial agents produced by microorganisms, leading to their isolation, purification and determination of the chemical structure of penicillin. They performed the first clinical trials of the antibiotic. Chain's mother and sister perished in the Holocaust of WW II.« |