The Life of Ernst Chain
Penicillin and Beyond
-
- $5.99
-
- $5.99
Publisher Description
A Jew who left Germany when Hitler came to power, Sir Ernst Chain was a winner, with Sir Alexander Fleming and Lord Florey, of the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1945. Later he was a significant figure in the use of the semi-synthetic penicillins which, from the mid-1950s onwards, revolutionized the use of the antibiotic in more than one field of medicine.
Born in Berlin in 1906, of a Russian emigre father and a German mother, Chain left Germany for England on 30 January 1933. Working first with Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins in Cambridge, then with Professor Howard Florey in Oxford, Chain studied the biochemical processes by which bacteriolytic agents operate. Writing up his results, he studied Fleming's neglected original report of the bacteria-inhibiting properties of penicillin, and with Florey's support embarked on a major investigation of how penicillin could be made and purified.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though his name is not well known to the general public, Chain was of central importance in the development of antibiotics, and was co-recipient of a 1945 Nobel Prize for his work on penicillin. Clark, author of The Survival of Charles Darwin, etc., effectively recreates Chain's life and career, from his Berlin youth as a scientifically and musically gifted Russian-German Jew until his move to England in 1933. There he joined Howard Florey's biochemistry laboratory to research the therapeutic application of penicillin; by 1944, the drug was being mass-produced for war use. The author draws a candid portrait of the ebullient, temperamental Chain and of his stormy professional relations. In Rome, where he headed the first international center for research on antibiotics, and later again in England, he developed semi-synthetic penicillin, which was of utmost value in the battle against bacteria. Chain also fostered academic collaboration with industry and government support of medical research. Photos.
