Howard Florey was born in Australia and knew from the beginning that he wanted to study medicine. In 1922, he graduated with degrees in science and medicine from the University of Adelaide and was awarded a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. At Oxford, he recruited an interdisciplinary group of scientists to work on the penicillin project. Among his first hires was biochemist Ernst Chain.
Ernst Chain was born in Berlin, Germany. Chain chose a scientific course of studies, graduating in chemistry and physiology from Friedrich Wilhelm University. After gaining expertise in additional fields of study, Chain eventually went to work with Florey at Oxford on penicillin after escaping from Nazi Germany.
"Perhaps the most useful lesson which has come out of the work on penicillin has been the demonstration that success in this field depends on the development and coordinated use of technical methods."
~ Howard Florey
"Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences."
~ Ernst Chain