Ernst Chain

Chain, working in Howard Florey's laboratory at Oxford's Dunn School of Pathology, developed the chemical extraction and purification methods that made penicillin usable as a drug, building on Alexander Fleming's 1928 observation of the mold's antibacterial properties. Together with Norman Heatley, Chain devised a multi-stage process using solvents to concentrate penicillin from the culture broth in useful quantities.

Yes, Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming. The award recognized Fleming's original discovery of penicillin and the Oxford team's work in purifying it and demonstrating its therapeutic effectiveness in animal and human trials.

Chain, who was Jewish, fled Nazi Germany shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, first moving to England and then joining Cambridge before being recruited to Florey's laboratory at Oxford. His departure was part of the broader exodus of Jewish scientists from German universities during the 1930s.

After World War II, Chain moved to Rome in 1948 to establish and direct the International Research Centre for Chemical Microbiology at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, where he continued research on antibiotics and fermentation processes. He returned to London in the 1960s to work at Imperial College, remaining active in biochemistry research.