After theNazis came to power, Chain understood that, being Jewish, he would no longer be safe in Germany. He left Germany and moved to England, arriving on 2 April 1933 with £10 in his pocket. Geneticist and physiologistJ. B. S. Haldane helped him obtain a position atUniversity College Hospital, London.
In 1939, he joinedHoward Florey to investigate natural antibacterial agents produced bymicroorganisms. This led him and Florey to revisit the work ofAlexander Fleming, who had describedpenicillin nine years earlier. Chain and Florey went on to discover penicillin's therapeutic action and its chemical composition. Chain and Florey discovered how to isolate and concentrate the germ-killing agent in penicillin. For this research, Chain, Florey, and Fleming received the Nobel Prize in 1945.
Along withEdward Abraham he was also involved in theorising the beta-lactam structure of penicillin in 1942,[17] which was confirmed byX-ray crystallography done byDorothy Hodgkin in 1945.Towards the end of World War II, Chain learned his mother and sister had been killed by the Nazis. After World War II, Chain moved to Rome, to work at theIstituto Superiore di Sanità (Superior Institute of Health). He returned to Britain in 1964 as the founder and head of the biochemistry department atImperial College London, where he stayed until his retirement, specialising infermentation technologies.[18]
In spite of his successful scientific career and widespread recognition from his Nobel Prize, Chain was for some time barred from entry to the United States under theMcCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, being declined a visa on two occasions in 1951.[19]
In 1948, he marriedAnne Beloff, sister ofRenee Beloff,Max Beloff,John Beloff andNora Beloff, and a biochemist of significant standing herself. In his later life, his Jewish identity became increasingly important to him. Chain was an ardent Zionist and he became a member of the board of governors of theWeizmann Institute of Science atRehovot in 1954, and later a member of the executive council. He raised his children securely within the Jewish faith, arranging much extracurricular tuition for them. His views were expressed most clearly in his speech 'Why I am a Jew' given at the World Jewish Congress Conference of Intellectuals in 1965.[2]
^Raju, T. N. (1999). "The Nobel chronicles. 1945: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955); Sir Ernst Boris Chain (1906-79); and Baron Howard Walter Florey (1898-1968)".Lancet.353 (9156): 936.doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)75055-8.PMID10094026.S2CID54397485.
^Notter, A. (1991). "The difficulties of industrializing penicillin (1928-1942) (Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey, Ernst Boris Chain)".Histoire des Sciences Médicales.25 (1):31–38.PMID11638360.
Medawar, Jean; Pyke, David (2012).Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled by the Nazi Regime (Paperback). New York: Arcade Publishing.ISBN978-1-61145-709-4.
