Biochemist
Biochemist
Born: August 13, 1918 Died: November 19, 2005
Frederick Sanger, who has died aged 95, was a biochemist who twice won the Nobel Prize in chemistry and was a pioneer of genome sequencing. He was one of just four individuals to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes; the others were Marie Curie, Linus Pauling and John Bardeen.
He first won the Prize in 1958 at the age of 40 for his work on the structure of proteins. He had determined the sequence of the amino acids in insulin and showed how they are linked together. He later turned his attention to the sequencing of nucleic acids and develop techniques to determine the exact sequence of the building blocks in DNA. That led to his second Nobel Prize, awarded jointly in 1980 with Stanford University's Paul Berg and Harvard University's Walter Gilbert, for their work determining base sequences in nucleic acids.
He was born in Gloucestershire and initially planned to study medicine like his father. However, he switched fields and earned a degree in natural sciences from Cambridge University in 1939.
During the Second World War, as a Quaker he registered as a conscientious objector and worked on completing his PhD on protein metabolism. He then joined a research group to work on proteins and chose to study insulin because of its medical implications. He perfected a way of unravelling the complete amino acid sequence of even the most complex of proteins.
In the 1960s, he became a senior member at the Medical Research Council's new laboratory for molecular biology at Cambridge. Venki Ramakrishnan, deputy director of the MRC Laboratory, said it would be impossible to overestimate the impact Sanger had on modern genetics and molecular biology.
In addition to the Nobel Prizes, Sanger was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954, Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963 and the Order of Merit in 1986. He declined a knighthood saying he preferred not to be called sir.
According to The Sanger Institute, which was opened in 1993 and continues his work in DNA sequencing, when he was asked if he would mind an institute being named after him, Sanger agreed but said: "It had better be good."
The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology - which Sanger helped found in 1962 - praised him as a modest and self-effacing man whose contributions made an extraordinary impact on molecular biology. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, called Sanger the father of the genomic era.
Sanger retired in 1983. He is survived by three children - Robin, Peter and Sally.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article