Frederick Sanger

Hello! My name is Fred Sanger. I was born in a small village in England on August 13th, 1918. When I was a boy, I loved being outdoors and learning about nature. My father was a doctor, and watching him help people made me very curious about how living things worked. I knew then that when I grew up, I wanted to become a scientist to find answers to my questions.

I went to a famous school called the University of Cambridge to study science. There, I became fascinated with the tiny things inside our bodies called proteins. They do all sorts of important jobs to keep us healthy. I wanted to know what they were made of. I chose to study a special protein called insulin, which helps our bodies use sugar for energy. It was like a giant puzzle made of very small pieces, and I wanted to be the first person to see how they all fit together.

For ten long years, I worked very hard in my laboratory, trying to solve the puzzle. Finally, in 1955, I did it! I figured out the entire structure of insulin and put all the pieces in the right order. It was a huge discovery that helped other scientists with their work. A few years later, in 1958, I was given a very special award for my discovery called the Nobel Prize. I felt so proud and excited that all my hard work had paid off.

But I wasn't done being curious. I wanted to solve an even bigger puzzle called DNA. You can think of DNA as the instruction book for every living thing, telling it how to grow and what to do. My team and I worked together to find a way to read the words in that book. In 1977, we invented a brand new way to read the instructions in DNA. This discovery was so important that in 1980, I was given a second Nobel Prize. I was one of the only people to ever win two of them.

I lived a very long and happy life of discovery and passed away when I was 95 years old. The methods I invented for reading proteins and DNA are still used by scientists all over the world today. They help doctors understand illnesses and create new medicines to help people. I hope my story shows you that if you stay curious and work hard, you can solve even the biggest puzzles.