Chain was born in 1906 in Berlin where his Russian-born father, an industrial chemist, had settled. Both his parents were Jewish. He graduated in chemistry and physiology from the Friedrich-Wilhelm University, Berlin, Germany in 1930 and undertook research in the chemical department of the Institute of Pathology at the Charit? Hospital, Berlin, 1930-1933. He was a talented pianist and music competed with chemistry in his thoughts about a career. In 1933 Chain became one of the many refugees from Nazi Germany, finding refuge in Britain. From 1933 to 1935 he worked in Cambridge at the School of Biochemistry under Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, moving in 1935 to the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford. Here he took part in the research and development of penicillin for which he shared with A. Fleming and H.W. Florey the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945. In 1948 he moved to the Istituto Superiore di Sanit?, Rome, Italy as Scientific Director of the International Research Centre for Chemical Microbiology, remaining there until 1964 when, after protracted negotiations, he took up the Chair of Biochemistry at Imperial College, London. He retired in 1973 but retained Research Fellowships until his death in 1979. He was elected FRS in 1949 and knighted in 1969.
From the guide to the Papers of: Chain, Sir Ernst Boris (1906-1979), 1906-1980, (Wellcome Library)
