Sir Ernst Boris Chain

Biochemist, born in Berlin, Germany. After studying physiology and chemistry in Berlin, he fled from Nazi Germany to Britain, where he taught at Cambridge (1933–5) and Oxford (1935–48). With Sir Howard Florey at Oxford he was a key figure in the successful isolation of penicillin (discovered earlier by Sir Alexander Fleming), and all three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He was director of the International Research Centre for Chemical Microbiology in Rome (1948–61), and professor of biochemistry at Imperial College, London (1961–73). He was knighted in 1970.

Sir Ernst Boris Chain (June 19, 1906 – August 12, 1979) was a German-born British biochemist, and a 1945 co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on penicillin.

Chain was born in Berlin to a Russian father who moved from his birthland to study Chemistry abroad, and a German Berliner mother. After the Nazis came to power, Chain knew that he, being a Jew, would no longer be safe in Germany.

He began working on phospholipids at Cambridge University under the direction of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.

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 previously. Chain and Florey went on to discover penicillin's therapeutic action and its chemical composition. It was Chain who worked out how to isolate and concentrate penicillin. For this research, Chain, Florey, and Fleming received the Nobel Prize in 1945.

Towards the end of World War II, Chain learned his mother and sister had perished in the war. After World War II, Chain moved to Rome, Italy to work at the Istituto Superiore di Sanita (Superior Institute of Health).

After retirement he moved to the west of Ireland.