Ernst Chain

Ernst Boris Chain (1906–1979) was a German-born British biochemist who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on penicillin.

Howard Florey: An Australian pathologist who led the Oxford team that developed penicillin into a usable treatment. Florey directed the Oxford program in which Chain developed methods to purify and test penicillin.
Penicillin: A group of beta-lactam antibiotics that kill susceptible bacteria by disrupting cell-wall synthesis. Chain and colleagues isolated and characterized this antibacterial substance for medical use.
Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany: The flight of Jews from Germany after the Nazi regime took power in 1933. Chain left Germany as Nazi persecution made continued scientific work there untenable.
Antibiotic era: The period in medicine when antibiotics became widely available to treat bacterial infections. Penicillin’s development helped usher in this transformation of infectious-disease treatment.
Alexander Fleming: A Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin’s antibacterial effect in 1928. Fleming’s observation became the starting point for the Oxford team’s later therapeutic work.
Penicillin fermentation: The cultivation of penicillin-producing fungi in nutrient media to obtain antibiotic for research or treatment. Improved production was essential to obtaining enough material for Chain’s experiments and clinical trials.
University of Berlin: A major German university where Chain studied chemistry and physiology. Chain’s scientific training began in Berlin before he emigrated to Britain.
Mass production of penicillin: The large-scale industrial manufacture of penicillin, developed during the Second World War. Scaling production turned the Oxford team’s laboratory findings into a widely usable medicine.
Norman Heatley: A British biochemist and engineer who devised practical methods for extracting and testing penicillin. Heatley’s experimental and production methods complemented Chain’s biochemical work.
Penicillin purification: The separation of penicillin from fungal culture fluids and other substances. Chain’s biochemical work helped make active penicillin available in concentrated form.

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Penicillin-binding proteinsRelated: Penicillin's clinical development made its bacterial targets a central research question.