1958 & 1980: Frederick Sanger (1918-2013)

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1958

"for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin"

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1980 (jointly with Walter Gilbert)

"for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids"

Born in Gloucestershire and educated at Bryanston School, Fred Sanger came to St John’s in 1936, to study Natural Sciences, receiving his BA in 1939. As a conscientious objector during the war, Sanger stayed on in Cambridge to study for a PhD (1944).

After receiving his doctorate, Sanger remained in Cambridge as a Beit Memorial Fellow for Medical Research 1944-51, and thereafter as a member of the external staff of the Medical Research Council until 1983. He was made a Fellow of King’s College in 1954 and an Honorary Fellow there in 1983.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1954 and went on to receive two of its highest honours – the Royal Medal in 1969, “In recognition of his pioneer work on the sequence of amino acids in proteins and of nucleotides of ribonucleic acids” and the Copley Medal in 1977, “In recognition of his distinguished work on the chemical structure of proteins and his studies on the sequences of nucleic acids”.

His work into amino acid sequences and protein structures, particularly insulin, garnered him his first Nobel Prize in 1958. His second came just over two decades later, in 1980, for his work in sequencing DNA. He is widely regarded as the father of genomics – his research paving the way for a revolution in the understanding of genetics. He is one of only four people to have been awarded two Nobel prizes, and the only one to have been awarded the prize for Chemistry twice.

His scientific accomplishments were recognised by the Queen on three occasions. A CBE in 1963 was followed, in 1981, by being made a Companion of Honour (CH). In 1986, having previously turned down a Knighthood due to not wanting to be addressed ‘Sir’, he was awarded the Order of Merit (OM), which is restricted to 24 living persons at any one time.