Ernst Boris Chain

Ernst Boris Chain 1906-79, English biochemist, b. Berlin, Germany. In 1933 he left Germany and went to England, where he conducted research at Cambridge from 1933 to 1935 and at Oxford from 1935; he lectured (1936-48) in chemical pathology at Oxford. In 1951 he became director of the International Research Center for Chemical Microbiology, Istituto Superiore de Sanità, Rome. He was professor of biochemistry at the Univ. of London from 1961. For his work on penicillin, Chain shared with Sir Alexander Fleming and Sir Howard Florey the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Chain, Sir Ernst Boris (1906–79) German-born British biochemist, who began his research career at Cambridge University in 1933. Two years later he joined Florey at Oxford, where they isolated and purified penicillin. They also developed a method of producing the drug in large quantities and carried out its first clinical trials. The two men shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with penicillin's discoverer, Alexander Fleming.