41 Facts About Frederick Sanger

Frederick Sanger was an English biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.

Frederick Sanger won the 1958 Chemistry Prize for determining the amino acid sequence of insulin and numerous other proteins, demonstrating in the process that each had a unique, definite structure; this was a foundational discovery for the central dogma of molecular biology.

Frederick Sanger is one of only three people to have won multiple Nobel Prizes in the same category, and one of five persons with two Nobel Prizes.

Frederick Sanger was born on 13 August 1918 in Rendcomb, a small village in Gloucestershire, England, the second son of Frederick Sanger, a general practitioner, and his wife, Cicely Sanger.

Frederick Sanger's father had worked as an Anglican medical missionary in China but returned to England because of ill health.

Frederick Sanger was 40 in 1916 when he married Cicely, who was four years younger.

Frederick Sanger's mother was the daughter of an affluent cotton manufacturer and had a Quaker background, but was not a Quaker.

When Frederick Sanger was around five years old the family moved to the small village of Tanworth-in-Arden in Warwickshire.

Frederick Sanger's brother Theo was a year ahead of him at the same school.

Able to complete his School Certificate a year early, for which he was awarded seven credits, Frederick Sanger was able to spend most of his last year of school experimenting in the laboratory alongside his chemistry master, Geoffrey Ordish, who had originally studied at Cambridge University and been a researcher in the Cavendish Laboratory.

In 1935, prior to heading off to college, Frederick Sanger was sent to Schule Schloss Salem in southern Germany on an exchange program.

The school placed a heavy emphasis on athletics, which caused Frederick Sanger to be much further ahead in the course material compared to the other students.

Frederick Sanger was shocked to learn that each day was started with readings from Hitler's Mein Kampf, followed by a Sieg Heil salute.

In 1936 Frederick Sanger went to St John's College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences.

Frederick Sanger's father was 60 and his mother was 58.

Frederick Sanger was a pacifist and a member of the Peace Pledge Union.

Frederick Sanger, although brought up and influenced by his religious upbringing, later began to lose sight of his Quaker related ways.

Frederick Sanger began to see the world through a more scientific lens, and with the growth of his research and scientific development he slowly drifted farther from the faith he grew up with.

Frederick Sanger has nothing but respect for the religious and states he took two things from it, truth and respect for all life.

Frederick Sanger's project was to investigate whether edible protein could be obtained from grass.

Frederick Sanger changed his research project to study the metabolism of lysine and a more practical problem concerning the nitrogen of potatoes.

Frederick Sanger's thesis had the title, "The metabolism of the amino acid lysine in the animal body".

Frederick Sanger was examined by Charles Harington and Albert Charles Chibnall and awarded his doctorate in 1943.

Neuberger moved to the National Institute for Medical Research in London, but Frederick Sanger stayed in Cambridge and in 1943 joined the group of Charles Chibnall, a protein chemist who had recently taken up the chair in the Department of Biochemistry.

Chibnall had already done some work on the amino acid composition of bovine insulin and suggested that Frederick Sanger look at the amino groups in the protein.

In determining these sequences, Frederick Sanger proved that proteins have a defined chemical composition.

Frederick Sanger used a chemical reagent 1-fluoro-2,4-dinitrobenzene, sourced from poisonous gas research by Bernhard Charles Saunders at the Chemistry Department at Cambridge University.

Frederick Sanger's reagent proved effective at labelling the N-terminal amino group at one end of the polypeptide chain.

From 1951 Frederick Sanger was a member of the external staff of the Medical Research Council and when they opened the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1962, he moved from his laboratories in the Biochemistry Department of the university to the top floor of the new building.

Frederick Sanger was beaten in the race to be the first to sequence a tRNA molecule by a group led by Robert Holley from Cornell University, who published the sequence of the 77 ribonucleotides of alanine tRNA from Saccharomyces cerevisiae in 1965.

Frederick Sanger then turned to sequencing DNA, which would require an entirely different approach.

Frederick Sanger looked at different ways of using DNA polymerase I from E coli to copy single stranded DNA.

Frederick Sanger shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Carol W Greider and Jack W Szostak for her work on telomeres and the action of telomerase.

The Wellcome Trust Frederick Sanger Institute is named in his honour.

Frederick Sanger married Margaret Joan Howe in 1940.

Frederick Sanger retired in 1983, aged 65, to his home, "Far Leys", in Swaffham Bulbeck outside Cambridge.

In 1992, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council founded the Frederick Sanger Centre, named after him.

Frederick Sanger said he found no evidence for a God so he became an agnostic.

Frederick Sanger declined the offer of a knighthood, as he did not wish to be addressed as "Sir".

In 2007 the British Biochemical Society was given a grant by the Wellcome Trust to catalogue and preserve the 35 laboratory notebooks in which Frederick Sanger recorded his research from 1944 to 1983.

Frederick Sanger died in his sleep at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge on 19 November 2013.