Sanger, Frederick

Sanger, Frederick (1918- ), British biochemist and Nobel laureate. Sanger was born in Rendcombe, Gloucestershire, and educated at the University of Cambridge. After graduating in 1939, Sanger taught at Cambridge and engaged in research into the metabolism of amino acids and the structure of insulin. He developed a new method for analysing the molecular structure of protein and showed that a molecule of insulin contains two peptide chains, linked together by two disulphide bonds. Sanger's research facilitated further advances in the field of biochemistry by John Kendrew and Max Perutz of Great Britain, who by 1960 were able to establish the three-dimensional structures of protein molecules. Sanger received the 1958 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, and in 1963 he was made a CBE. In 1980 Sanger was again awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, this time for his development of a method by which the nucleotide sequence of the nucleic acids could be rapidly determined. This work was basic to the growth of genetic engineering.