Ernst Boris Chain

Sir Ernst Boris Chain
Ernst Boris Chain (1945)
Born	(1906-06-19)19 June 1906 Berlin, Germany
Died	12 August 1979(1979-08-12) (aged 73) Castlebar, Ireland
Residence	Berlin (until 1933) London (from 1933)
Citizenship	German (until 1939) British (from 1939)
Fields	Biochemistry
Institutions	Imperial College London University of Cambridge University of Oxford Istituto Superiore di Sanità
Alma mater	Friedrich Wilhelm University
Known for	The development of Penicillin
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1945) Fellow of the Royal Society (1948) Knight Bachelor(1969)
Spouse	Anne Chain (m. 1948–1979, his death)

Sir Ernst Boris Chain, FRS (19 June 1906 – 12 August 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, the son of Margarete (née Eisner) and Michael Chain, who was a chemist and industrialist dealing in chemical products. His family was Jewish. His father emigrated from Russia to study chemistry abroad and his mother was from Berlin. In 1930, he received his degree in chemistry from Friedrich Wilhelm University.

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 House, Cambridge University, 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 naturalized as a British subject in 1939.