August 12th
British-German biochemist who shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sir Alexander Fleming and Howard Walter Florey for their work on the penicillin. A Jew, Chain fled Nazi Germany to England in 1933. His diverse studies include phospholipids, snake venom, tumor metabolism, and lysozyme. They performed the first clinical trials of this antibiotic. Chain’s mother and sister perished in the Holocaust of WW II. Died 12 August 1979 at the age of 73.
