Sutton-Steininger - Sonja

Ernst Boris Chain (1906-1979) was born in Berlin, of Russian-German-Jewish descent. His father, Michael Chain, was a chemist and industrialist who died when Ernst was 13 years old. Ernst Chain studied chemistry and physiology at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University, Berlin. After graduation in 1930 he worked for three years at the Pathology Institute of the Charité Hospital in Berlin on enzyme research where he obtained his doctorate. In 1933 after the Nazi regime came to power in Germany he emigrated to England leaving behind his mother and sister who both perished in the Holocaust.

He initially worked at the School of Biochemistry, Cambridge, before being invited to Oxford University where he worked in the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, becoming demonstrator and lecturer in chemical pathology in 1936. In 1948 he was appointed Scientific Director of the International Research Centre for Chemical Microbiology at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome. He became Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College, University of London, in 1961.

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