Sir Ernst Boris Chain was a German-born British biochemist best known for being a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on penicillin.
14 Facts About Ernst Chain
2.
Ernst Chain's family was of both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish descent.
3.
Ernst Chain's father emigrated from Russia to study chemistry abroad and his mother was from Berlin.
4.
Ernst Chain's father descends from Zerahiah ben Shealtiel Hen who was a prominent figure among the Catalonian Jewry and whose ancestors were leading Jewish figures in Babylonia.
5.
Ernst Chain was a lifelong friend of Professor Albert Neuberger, whom he met in Berlin in the 1930s.
6.
Ernst Chain was naturalised as a British subject in April 1939.
7.
Towards the end of World War II, Ernst Chain learned his mother and sister had been killed by the Nazis.
8.
Ernst Chain returned to Britain in 1964 as the founder and head of the biochemistry department at Imperial College London, where he stayed until his retirement, specialising in fermentation technologies.
9.
On 17 March 1948 Ernst Chain was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society.
10.
Ernst Chain was an ardent Zionist and he became a member of the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovot in 1954, and later a member of the executive council.
11.
Ernst Chain raised his children securely within the Jewish faith, arranging much extracurricular tuition for them.
12.
Ernst Chain's views were expressed most clearly in his speech 'Why I am a Jew' given at the World Jewish Congress Conference of Intellectuals in 1965.
13.
Ernst Chain was appointed Knight Bachelor in the 1969 Birthday Honours.
14.
Ernst Chain died in 1979 at the Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar, Ireland.