DNA genius and double Nobel Prize winner Fred Sanger of Cambridge dies aged 95
Written by CHRIS ELLIOTT

DOUBLE Nobel Prize winner Fred Sanger, the brilliant Cambridge scientist whose work pioneered research into the human genome, has died in his 90s.

Born in Gloucestershire, he came to Cambridge in 1939 to study natural sciences at St John’s College.

He began carrying out research in the university’s department of biochemistry the following year, obtaining a PhD degree in 1943. During his first two years at Cambridge, both his parents died of cancer.

In 1958, his work on determining the structure of insulin earned him a Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Then in the 1960s and 1970s he turned his attention to DNA, the material that carries all the information about how a living thing will look and function.

He became head of the division of protein chemistry in the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

He and his team developed a rapid method of DNA sequencing – a way to “read” DNA. It was the forerunner for the work on the human genome which now holds out the promise of curing many of the major illnesses that plague mankind.

That research garnered him a second Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980. He retired in 1983.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Hinxton, where work on the genome continues, is named after him.

Dr Sanger, who lived in Swaffham Bulbeck, was 95, and it is understood he had been ill for the past two years.

Only four people in history have been awarded the Nobel Prize twice.