Vernon Martin Ingram escaped Nazi Germany as a young boy to grow up to become a noted biochemistry professor and researcher. Ingram is credited with the discovery of the exact molecular distinction between the hemoglobin carrying sickle cell anemia and normal hemoglobin. He is currently a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been since 1958.

Ingram was born in 1924 in Breslau, Germany, (present-day Wroclaw, Poland). While still very young, his parents brought him to England because of the dangers they faced as the Nazis assumed power in Germany. As a young man, Ingram attended college at the University of London, receiving a B.S. degree in 1943. He did graduate studies at Birkbeck College and earned his Ph.D. in 1949. While working on his Ph.D., Ingram worked as a chemistry instructor at Birkbeck and at the University of London. He lived in America for two years (1950 -...