Frederick Sanger

British biochemist who was twice the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, the only person to have been so. In 1958 he was awarded a Nobel prize in chemistry "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin". In 1980, Walter Gilbert and Sanger shared half of the chemistry prize "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids". The other half was awarded to Paul Berg "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA".

He is the fourth person to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes, either individually or in tandem with others.

He has lost his religious faith and calls himself an agnostic. In an interview published in the Times newspaper in 2000 Sanger is quoted as saying: "My father was a committed Quaker and I was brought up as a Quaker, and for them truth is very important. I drifted away from those beliefs - one is obviously looking for truth but one needs some evidence for it. Even if I wanted to believe in God I would find it very difficult. I would need to see proof."

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Sources:

1.) Hargittai, István (April 1999), "Interview: Frederick Sanger", The Chemical Intelligencer (New York: Springer-Verlag) 4 (2): 6–11. This interview, which took place on 16 September 1997, was republished in: Hargittai, István (2002), "Chapter 5: Frederick Sanger", Candid science II: conversations with famous biomedical scientists, London: Imperial College Press, pp. 73–83, ISBN 1-86094-288-1

2.) Ahuja, Anjana (12 January 2000), "The double Nobel laureate who began the book of life", The Times (London): 40