Sir Ernst Boris Chain was born on June 19, 1906, and passed away on August 12, 1979. He was a biochemist who was born in Germany but became a British citizen. In 1945, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey. The prize was awarded for their discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases.
Life and career
Chain was born in Berlin, Germany, to a German-Jewish family. His parents were Margarete (born Eisner) and Michael Chain, a chemist and industrialist who worked with chemical products. His father was a Russian-Jewish person who moved from Mogilev, Russia (now Belarus), to study chemistry abroad. His mother was born in Berlin. In 1930, Chain earned a degree in chemistry from Friedrich Wilhelm University. He was a longtime friend of Professor Albert Neuberger, whom he met in Berlin during the 1930s.
When the Nazis gained power in Germany, Chain realized he was in danger because he was Jewish. He left Germany and traveled to England, arriving on April 2, 1933, with only £10. Geneticist and physiologist J. B. S. Haldane helped Chain find a job at University College Hospital in London.
After a few months, Chain became a PhD student at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he studied phospholipids under the guidance of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. In 1935, he began working as a lecturer in pathology at Oxford University. During this time, he researched topics such as snake venoms, tumor metabolism, lysozymes, and biochemistry techniques. Chain became a British citizen in April 1939.
In 1939, Chain joined Howard Florey to study natural antibacterial agents made by microorganisms. This work led them to revisit the research of Alexander Fleming, who had discovered penicillin nine years earlier. Chain and Florey discovered how penicillin works and its chemical structure. They also found a way to isolate and concentrate the germ-killing substance in penicillin. For this research, Chain, Florey, and Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Chain also worked with Edward Abraham to develop a theory about the beta-lactam structure of penicillin in 1942. This theory was confirmed by X-ray crystallography conducted by Dorothy Hodgkin in 1945. At the end of World War II, Chain learned that his mother and sister had been killed by the Nazis. After the war, he moved to Rome to work at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. He returned to Britain in 1964 as the founder and head of the biochemistry department at Imperial College London, where he worked until his retirement, focusing on fermentation technologies.
On March 17, 1948, Chain was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society. Despite his scientific achievements and Nobel Prize, Chain was temporarily prevented from entering the United States under the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. He was denied a visa twice in 1951.
In 1948, Chain married Anne Beloff, who was the sister of Renee Beloff, Max Beloff, John Beloff, and Nora Beloff. Anne was also a respected biochemist. In his later years, Chain’s Jewish identity became more important to him. He was an active supporter of Zionism and joined the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1954. He later served on the institute’s executive council. He ensured his children were raised within the Jewish faith and provided them with additional education. His views were clearly expressed in a speech titled "Why I am a Jew," delivered at the World Jewish Congress Conference of Intellectuals in 1965.
Chain was honored as a Knight Bachelor in the 1969 Birthday Honours. He died on March 17, 1979, at the Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar, Ireland. The biochemistry building at Imperial College London and a road in Castlebar are named in his honor.