Ernst Chain
Template:Short description Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist
Sir Ernst Boris Chain (19 June 1906 – 12 August 1979) was a German-born British biochemist and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on penicillin.<ref name="odnb">Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Life and careerEdit
Chain was born in Berlin, the son of Margarete (Template:Née) and Michael Chain, a chemist and industrialist dealing in chemical products.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His family was of both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish descent. His father emigrated from Russia to study chemistry abroad and his mother was from Berlin.<ref name=ct/> In 1930, he received his degree in chemistry from Friedrich Wilhelm University. His father descends from Zerahiah ben Shealtiel Ḥen who was a prominent figure among the Catalonian Jewry and whose ancestors were leading Jewish figures in Babylonia.<ref>Eliezer Laine and Zalman Berger, Avnei Chein - Toldot Mishpachat Chein, Brooklyn, New-York, 2004. Amazon link to book info</ref> 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. 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 on phospholipids under the direction of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. In 1935, he accepted a job at Oxford University as a lecturer in pathology. During this time he worked on a range of research topics, including snake venoms, tumour metabolism, lysozymes, and biochemistry techniques. Chain was naturalised as a British subject in April 1939.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>
In 1939, he joined Howard Florey to investigate natural antibacterial agents produced by microorganisms. This led him and Florey to revisit the work of Alexander Fleming, who had described penicillin nine years earlier. Chain and Florey went on to discover penicillin's therapeutic action and its chemical composition. Chain and Florey discovered how to isolate and concentrate the germ-killing agent in penicillin. For this research, Chain, Florey, and Fleming received the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Along with Edward Abraham he was also involved in theorising the beta-lactam structure of penicillin in 1942,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> which was confirmed by X-ray crystallography done by Dorothy Hodgkin in 1945. Towards the end of World War II, Chain learned his mother and sister had been killed by the Nazis. After World War II, Chain moved to Rome, to work at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Superior Institute of Health). He returned to Britain in 1964 as the founder and head of the biochemistry department at Imperial College London, where he stayed until his retirement, specialising in fermentation technologies.<ref name="www3.imperial.ac.uk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
On 17 March 1948 Chain was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society.
In spite of his successful scientific career and widespread recognition from his Nobel Prize, Chain was for some time barred from entry to the United States under the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, being declined a visa on two occasions in 1951.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 1948, he married Anne Beloff, sister of Renee Beloff, Max Beloff, John Beloff and Nora Beloff, and a biochemist of significant standing herself. In his later life, his Jewish identity became increasingly important to him. Chain was an ardent Zionist and he became a member of the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot in 1954, and later a member of the executive council. He raised his children securely within the Jewish faith, arranging much extracurricular tuition for them. His views were expressed most clearly in his speech 'Why I am a Jew' given at the World Jewish Congress Conference of Intellectuals in 1965.<ref name="odnb"/>
Chain was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 1969 Birthday Honours.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>
Chain died in 1979 at the Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar, Ireland. The Imperial College London biochemistry building is named after him,<ref name="www3.imperial.ac.uk"/> as is a road in Castlebar.<ref name=ct>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
BibliographyEdit
External linksEdit
Template:Sister project Template:Sister project
- Template:Nobelprize including the Nobel Lecture, 20 March 1946 The Chemical Structure of the Penicillins
- Template:Cite journal
- Template:Find a Grave
Template:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Laureates 1926-1950 Template:1945 Nobel Prize winners