Ah, this seems like a nice dude.
The Eighth Day of Creation has two nice paragraphs about his work. He was shy and quiet, and didn't boast about his slow and steady progress, possibly because of this he only had a junior fellowship and at some point some people wanted to kick him out of the lab somewhere between 1948 - 1952, quoted at: sandwalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/fred-sanger-1918-2013.html