Ernst Boris Chain

Sir Ernst Boris Chain (June 19th 1906 - August 12th 1979) was a biochemist German Juif , naturalized British which was in 1945 Co-prize winner with Fleming and Florey of the Nobel Prize of physiology or medicine for its work on the Pénicilline.

Chain was born in Berlin from a Russian father which had left his native land to study chemistry abroad and from a German mother from Berlin. In 1930, it accepted its diploma in chemistry at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University. After the Nazis had taken with the capacity, Chain understood that as a Jew it would not be any more in safety in Germany. He emigrated in 1933 and settled in England.

He started to work on the Phospholipide S with the Université of Cambridge under the direction to sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. In 1935, it accepted a station with the Université of Oxford as assistant in pathology. During this time he worked in a whole series of research topics including/understanding venoms of snake, the metabolism of the tumors, the Lysozyme S and the techniques of biochemistry.

In 1939, it united with Howard Florey to study the agents antibactériens natural products by the micro-organisms and both were thus led to be interested in work of Alexander Fleming which had described the Pénicilline nine years earlier. Continuing its research Chain and Florey discovered the therapeutic action of penicillin and its chemical composition. It is Chain which included/understood how to isolate penicillin and to concentrate it. He also theorized the structure of it, which was confirmed by a crystallography with x-rays made by Dorothy Hodgkin. Work of Chain, Florey and Fleming was crowned by the Nobel Prize in 1945. Ernst Boris Chain became member of the Royal Society the March 17th 1949.

Towards the end of the Second world war, Chain learned that his/her mother and her sister had perished during the conflict. After the Second world war, Chain settled with Rome to work with the Istituto Superiore di Sanita (Institute of higher learning of Health). It returned to Great Britain in 1964 as director of the department of biochemistry to the Imperial College of London.

In 1948, it married Anne Beloff, sister of max Beloff and Nora Beloff. In the continuation of its life its Jewish identity became increasingly important in its eyes. In 1954 he became member of the board of directors of the Institut Weizmann with Rehovot and thereafter member of the executive council. It gave to his children a solid Jewish education, in their making follow many extra-curricular courses. It is in its speech entitled “Why I am Jewish”, pronounced at the time of the Conference of the Intellectuals of the world Jewish Congrès in 1965, that its sights were expressed with the most clearness.

After its retirement it settled in Western Ireland and finished its life with Castlebar, in the Comté of Mayo.

Sources

References

Oxford Dictionary off National Biography
Nobel Readings, Physiology gold Medicine 1942-1962 , Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964

External bonds

Biography on the site of the foundation Nobel

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