César Milstein was born on October 8, 1927, in the eastern Argentine city of Bahía Blanca, one of three sons of Lázaro and Máxima Milstein. He studied biochemistry at the National University of Buenos Aires from 1945 to 1952, graduating with a degree in chemistry. Heavily involved in opposing the policies of President Juan Peron and working part-time as a chemical analyst for a laboratory, Milstein barely managed to pass with poor grades. Nonetheless, he pursued graduate studies at the Instituto de Biología Química of the University of Buenos Aires and completed his doctoral dissertation on the chemistry of aldehyde dehydrogenase, an alcohol enzyme used as a catalyst, in 1957.

With a British Council scholarship, he continued his studies at Cambridge University from 1958 to 1961 under the guidance of Frederick Sanger, a distinguished researcher in the field of enzymes. Sanger had determined...