Frederick Sanger

Frederick Sanger was a British biochemist who spent his career unraveling the fine structure of biological molecules. In 1958 he won his first Nobel for determining the amino acid sequence of insulin, proving that proteins had unique, definite structures - a discovery that anchored the central dogma of molecular biology. He moved to the newly built Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he developed the first practical technique for sequencing DNA. That method, refined over years, opened vast experimental territory and remains widely used. It brought him a second Chemistry Nobel in 1980, shared with Walter Gilbert and Paul Berg. He died in 2013, one of only five people to hold two Nobel Prizes.