Ernst B. Chain
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Ernst Boris Chain
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1945
Born: 19 June 1906, Berlin, Germany
Died: 12 August 1979, Mulrany, Ireland
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various infectious diseases”
Prize share: 1/3
Work
After Alexander Fleming’s 1928 discovery that a certain mold produced a substance called penicillin that inhibited the growth of bacteria, it was not a major leap to think that penicillin could be used as a pharmaceutical. However, the substance proved to be unstable and difficult to produce in pure form. Ernst Boris Chain, Howard Florey, and their colleagues succeeded in systematically producing a pure form of penicillin at the beginning of the 1940s and in investigating its properties in more detail. Additional efforts led to a pharmaceutical that could be produced in larger quantities.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
