Chain, Ernst Boris

Chain, Ernst Boris (1906-1979), German-born British biochemist, pathologist, and Nobel laureate, born in Berlin and educated at the University of Berlin. Because he was Jewish, he left Germany for England after Hitler's accession to power in 1933. He engaged in research on enzymes at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, where he collaborated with the Australian pathologist Sir Howard Walter Florey in the investigation of antibiotic substances produced by moulds. By 1941 this investigation had resulted in the small-scale production of penicillin. After 1950 Chain worked at the Higher Institute of Health in Rome, and in 1961 he became Professor of Biochemistry at the University of London. Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Florey and the British bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming.