Frederick Sanger, a British biochemist whose discoveries about the chemistry of life led to the decoding of the human genome and to the development of new drugs like human growth hormone, died on November 19th in Cambridge, England. He was 95.
Dr. Sanger won his first Nobel Prize, in chemistry, in 1958 for showing how amino acids link together to form insulin. The discovery gave scientists the tools to analyze any protein in the body.
In 1980 he received his second Nobel, also in chemistry, for inventing a method of “reading” the molecular letters that make up the genetic code. This discovery was crucial to the development of biotechnology drugs and provided the basic tool kit for decoding the entire human genome two decades later.
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Read the full, original story here: Frederick Sanger, 95, Two-Time Winner of Nobel and Pioneer in Genetics, Dies
Additional Resources:
- “Frederick Sanger, father of DNA sequencing, dead at 95,” Nature
- “Nobel Scientists | Interviews with Nobel Prize winning scientists: Dr Frederick Sanger,” BBC News
