Frederick Sanger Essay
Frederick Sanger was born on August 13, 1918 in Rendcombe, United Kingdom. His parents were Frederick Sanger and Cicely Sanger. They had another son, along with Frederick, Theodore Sanger. Sanger and his brother grew up in Rendcombe, Gloucestershire. Their father converted to Quakerism soon after Frederick’s birth. Therefore, Frederick and his brother were both raised as Quakers. From the age of nine, Sanger boarded at Downs School, which was a residential Quaker preparatory school near Worcestershire. When Sanger was fourteen he was sent to get his formal education from Bryanston School. Afterwards, he attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences. While at Cambridge he obtained his B.A degree in natural sciences in 1939.
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He was working with a team on the chemical structure of proteins. One of Sanger’s first projects was studying the amino acid composition of insulin. Sanger’s objective to this research was to determine the exact structure of insulin. He struggled with funding for his research, since most scientists believed that amino acids in proteins were randomly arranged. His funding problem was solved in 1944, when he was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research. Only six years later, he became a member of the Medical Research Council in reward for his work. Sanger is one of the few scientists to be awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry twice. The first time was for his methods developed for sequencing amino acids. After eight years of mistakes, Sanger finally determined that insulin is made up fifty one amino acids. Also, that proteins have a defined sequence. After this discovery, he turned to sequencing the building blocks in DNA. Sanger explored over fifteen methods for reading the DNA linear code. Sanger finally come up with a method that allowed long strands of DNA to be rapidly sequenced. As many as five hundred bases could be read at one time. This method is what earned him his second Nobel Prize in 1980. After this, Sanger was also awarded a knighthood, but he turned it down because he did not want to be called ‘Sir’. Only five years
He was working with a team on the chemical structure of proteins. One of Sanger’s first projects was studying the amino acid composition of insulin. Sanger’s objective to this research was to determine the exact structure of insulin. He struggled with funding for his research, since most scientists believed that amino acids in proteins were randomly arranged. His funding problem was solved in 1944, when he was awarded a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research. Only six years later, he became a member of the Medical Research Council in reward for his work. Sanger is one of the few scientists to be awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry twice. The first time was for his methods developed for sequencing amino acids. After eight years of mistakes, Sanger finally determined that insulin is made up fifty one amino acids. Also, that proteins have a defined sequence. After this discovery, he turned to sequencing the building blocks in DNA. Sanger explored over fifteen methods for reading the DNA linear code. Sanger finally come up with a method that allowed long strands of DNA to be rapidly sequenced. As many as five hundred bases could be read at one time. This method is what earned him his second Nobel Prize in 1980. After this, Sanger was also awarded a knighthood, but he turned it down because he did not want to be called ‘Sir’. Only five years