by Yasmine Goldstein, Summer Intern
A hundred years ago, even a minor infection could spell disaster. A small cut on the hand or an infected water source could escalate into something life-threatening. Today, we rarely think twice; after a quick doctor’s appointment, a short course of antibiotics sets things right. That dramatic shift in human health began not with grand visionary plans, but with simple scientific curiosity. Penicillin, the first true antibiotic, emerged because a handful of researchers wanted to understand why a particular mould behaved the way it did. One of the most influential figures in this story was Ernst Chain, a refugee who arrived in Britain with almost nothing and ended up helping to launch a medical revolution.
Ernst Boris Chain was born in Berlin in 1906 into a family with both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. His father, Michael, had moved from Russia to study chemistry and descended from the medieval Catalonian Jewish physician Zerahiah ben Shealtiel Hen. Ernst completed his chemistry degree in 1930, but by 1933, the rise of Nazism made Germany unsafe. Chain fled to England with only £10 in his pocket, leaving behind his mother and sister, both of whom were later murdered in a concentration camp. His cousin, Anna Sacharina, managed to join him in Britain, and their close bond endured for the rest of her life.
Chain’s first job in the UK, obtained with the help of J. B. S. Haldane, the UK’s foremost scientific mind of the time, was at University College Hospital in the chemical pathology department. He disliked the work and the poor equipment, especially compared to the labs he had known in Germany. Within months, he left for a PhD at Cambridge, still searching for the right scientific puzzle to pursue. Everything changed in 1935 when he teamed up with Howard Florey at Oxford. Alexander Fleming had famously noticed the antibacterial effects of penicillin years earlier, but no one had purified it. Chain and Florey were not motivated by dreams of transforming medicine; they were biochemists following an intriguing lead, curious about what this mysterious mould could become if isolated properly. That curiosity set the stage for one of the most important experiments in medical history.
In 1940, Chain and Florey infected eight mice with a lethal dose of Streptococcus pyogenes. Four were treated with purified penicillin; the other four were not. By the next morning, the untreated mice were dead. The treated mice were alive. The implications were enormous, but scientific breakthroughs rarely arrive without heartbreak. When they attempted to treat their first human patient, Albert Alexander, a police officer dying of septicaemia, the early results were promising. Unfortunately, they did not have enough penicillin to complete the course of treatment. Alexander deteriorated and died. It was a painful reminder that discovery alone is not enough; availability and production matter. As a result, mass manufacture began in earnest. In 1945, Chain, Florey, and Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work that had already begun saving thousands of soldiers and civilians during the Second World War. All of it stemmed from a few scientists who wanted to understand a mould.
After the war, Chain moved to Rome to work at the Superior Institute of Health, returning to Britain in 1964 to found the Biochemistry Department at Imperial College London. His Jewish identity took on deeper meaning later in life, and he served on the Board of Governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. He also delivered a notable 1965 address titled “Why I Am a Jew.” Outside the laboratory, Chain was a gifted musician. At one point, he had seriously considered pursuing piano professionally, and he often performed in public with his son. Fluent in five languages and knighted in 1969, Sir Ernst Chain lived a life as full and complex as the molecules he studied. He died in 1979 in his family’s holiday home in Ireland. Ernst Chain’s story is a reminder of how deeply the world can change when scientists follow their questions with persistence and curiosity. Chain did not set out to save millions of lives. He set out to understand something interesting. In doing so, he helped unlock one of the greatest medical advances in history. Sometimes, the smallest spark of curiosity can rewrite the fate of humanity.
