"It is more difficult to get the first prize than a second" - BBC

The only winner of two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry British biochemist Frederick Sanger died at age 95 in a hospital Addenbrukskoy Cambridge. He lived a truly happy life, becoming one of the three people in the world, twice awarded the Nobel Prize.

In the scientific world

Frederick Sanger called the “father of genomics,” colleagues – “one of the greatest scientists of any generation,” and the inhabitants of Great Britain – “the real hero of British science.” And it seems that none of these determinations is no exaggeration. This is only the visible part of the world that made his life truly happy.

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Frederick Sanger was born in Gloucestershire in 1918. The family believed that the boy will continue the work of his father and become a doctor. But he did not like the idea to conduct “chaotic lifestyles”, running from one patient to another, he wanted to work on any one issue. It’s a little baby and even unfair to the doctors attitude led him to Cambridge University – to study biochemistry, and in that city he spent all of his remaining years. He did not take part in World War II, refusing to perform military service for ideological reasons.

It was not just the present, and the hard-nosed scientist, completely immersed in his task.

After graduation, he took up the study of proteins. The main problem was that no one knew how to alternate in which 22 amino acids that make up the protein chain. Young Sanger came up then the “method of the puzzle”, using which his associates were able to determine the sequence of many proteins. A Sanger used his method to study insulin and spent 10 years on it. For this his first job he got in 1954, his first Nobel Prize – just four years after the publication of the final results.

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In 1962, the next phase of his life – he took up the study of DNA.

Although protein instead of 22 letters of its alphabet consists of only four – A, C, T and G – a chain of segments of DNA were so long that the “method of the puzzle” here is not fit. We needed a different method, and full of despair and lack of faith in yourself, Senger found him, being able to use it to read the genome lengths of 500-600 characters. Invented their technology is thousands of times then increased the speed of DNA sequencing. In 1977, Sanger world’s first fully sequenced the DNA of the virus more than 5000 nucleotides in length and engaged in sequencing mitochondrial 16,000 letters long.

in 1980 for this work he received his second Nobel Prize.

«It is more difficult to get the first prize than the second. If you have already received the award once, then you have the opportunity to work with, you can assemble the team and any thing you will make it much easier », – said Senger in one of his rare interviews.

Scientists

this rank often begin to lighten up and engage the leadership of research rather than by themselves. Until the very last days Sanger did not leave the walls of the Cambridge laboratory, he has not given research students, and led them himself, but he and the disciples that truly was not – he had the least inclination to administer or magisterium.

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Sanger called “disarmingly humble,” and indeed, when he decided to give a knighthood, he refused – did not want to be called “Sir».

What Frederick Sanger did for science is invaluable. Not the fact that it works without humanity could boast the ability to decipher their own and other people’s genomes, it is possible that many diseases would be much more difficult to fight today.

Many scientists, even very successful ones, prefer to look at things, they convince themselves and their colleagues, which will be a great happiness to the end of life if you manage to put in a total purse of science his little penny. And the production of the penny becomes their main goal, and in the end, if you’re lucky, they will obtain it. Using the financial analogy, we can say that Sanger’s intention was to get a pretty penny and not even a million – everything! That’s why he did not leave the lab even after receiving two major awards for scientists of the world, and for this reason it can be argued that this man has lived a truly happy life.