Origins & Early Life

Sir Ernst Boris Chain (19 June 1906 – 12 August 1979) was a German-born British biochemist. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases". Chain was born to a German-Jewish family in Berlin, the son of Margarete (née Eisner) and Michael Chain, a chemist and industrialist dealing in chemical products. His father was a Russian-Jewish émigré from Mogilev (Russian Empire, now Belarus) to study chemistry abroad and his mother was from Berlin.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

In 1930, he received his degree in chemistry from Friedrich Wilhelm University. He was a lifelong friend of Professor Albert Neuberger, whom he met in Berlin in the 1930s. After the Nazis came to power, Chain understood that, being Jewish, he would no longer be safe in Germany. He left Germany and moved to England, arriving on 2 April 1933 with £10 in his pocket. Geneticist and physiologist J.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

B. S. Haldane helped him obtain a position at University College Hospital, London. After a couple of months he was accepted as a PhD student at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he began working...

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