LUIS DIAS
As medical students we are bludgeoned by such an overload of ‘knowledge’, hoping to upload it into the memory drive of our brains for as long as possible (definitely until we can spill it out for our exams) that there is little room (certainly not in our dry textbooks) for the fascinating lives of the pioneering men and women who were responsible for those facts, discoveries, and innovations in the first place.
I’ve been a social media follower of Hungarian-American writer Daphne Kalotay ever since I read her magnificently crafted 2010 historical fiction novel ‘Russian Winter’ about an aging ballerina and the secrets from the past that come to light when her priceless jewellery collection is auctioned off.
Kalotay recently posted an image of the books she was then reading. Among them was ‘Breaking Through: My Life in Science’, the autobiography of Hungarian-American biochemist researcher Katalin Karikó, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine last year (along with colleague Drew Weissman) for “discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” It was published just days after they won the prize.
I expected it to be a jargon-peppered read, but her blunt, direct, no-nonsense style drew me in. Her book deserves a whole column someday but I want to focus on the foremost influence on her from her school years in Hungary.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986), the Hungarian biochemist who first isolated vitamin C, and whose breakthrough research into cellular respiration laid the groundwork for the identification of the Krebs (or citric acid) cycle and who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is a cult figure in his native country, although like Karikó, he would also finally live in the U.S.
As school children, Karikó and her classmates decide to write to the great man in the U.S. They didn’t have his address, so they just posted it to “Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, USA”.
She called it “a stab in the dark, a wild gamble”. They didn’t believe the letter would ever arrive, but incredibly, a month later, they received a reply, a personal letter from Szent-Gyorgyi himself, with a copy of his book ‘The Living State.’ He inscribed it “To the enthusiastic cultivators of science in Kisújszállás” (Karikó’s rural hometown).
That small gesture of kindness touched Karikó. “I had no doubt, The great scientist is talking to me. Cultivator of science. Oh, yes. That I am.”
That little schoolgirl, a butcher’s daughter, would become a biochemist researcher herself, and also win a Nobel almost a century later. Millions around the world owe their lives to her because of the COVID vaccine that her work enabled.
The path-breaking work of Szent-Gyorgyi (Hungarian for “Saint George”, a chivalric order in the name of the saint) straddles two of our first-year subjects in medical school, physiology and biochemistry. He also ascertained the molecular basis of muscle contraction; that muscles contain actin, which when combined with the protein myosin and the energy source adenosine triphosphate (ATP), contract muscle fibres. If his name did appear in our textbooks, it would have been at best a footnote.
Music played an important part in the Szent-Gyorgyi household. Albert’s mother Jozefina had wanted to become an opera singer when young and auditioned for Gustav Mahler, then a conductor at the Budapest Opera. He advised her to marry instead, since her voice was not suitable for operatic singing. Albert himself was a good pianist, while his brother Pál became a professional violinist.
Albert’s academic studies were interrupted in 1914 by the First World War, where he served as a medic. Two years later, disgusted by the war, he deliberately shot himself in the arm and claimed he was wounded by enemy firein order to return to civilian life and research.
He received a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1929 where his research involved isolating an organic acid (which he then called “hexuronic acid”) from adrenal gland tissue.
A year later, after accepting a position at the University of Szeged, Hungary, he and his research fellow Joseph Svirbely found that “hexuronic acid” was actually the thus far unidentified antiscorbutic (anti-scurvy) factor, known as vitamin C, later given its chemical name L-ascorbic acid.
There is a humorous story about Szent-Gyorgyi’s isolation of the
vitamin C from paprika. One night his wife served him paprika for dinner, and it occurred to him that he had never tested it for the vitamin. He said in a 1984 interview. “I didn’t feel like eating it but didn’t have the courage to tell my wife.” So he told her he would finish eating the dish in his laboratory, and subjected his “dinner” to tests instead and found it was a rich source of vitamin C!
It was for his work not only on vitamin C but also on cellular respiration, identifying fumaric acid and other components of the Krebs cycle (which is also known now as the Szent-Gyorgyi-Krebs cycle) that he won the 1937 Nobel Prize.
But Szent-Gyorgyi offered all the Nobel Prize money to the fight against the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1940. He joined the Hungarian Resistance movement during the Second World War and helped Jewish friends escape to safety.
Although Hungary was allied with the Axis Powers, the Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay sent Szent-Gyorgyi to Istanbul in 1944 under the guise of a scientific lecture to begin secret negotiations with the Allies. The Germans learned of this plot and Hitler himself issued a warrant for the Szent-Gyorgyi’s arrest. He escaped from house arrest and spent 1944 to 1945 on the run from the Gestapo.
After the war, Szent-Gyorgyi entered Hungarian politics and was even touted as a potential president but his disillusionment with communism prompted his emigration to the U.S. in 1947.
Nevertheless, Szent-Gyorgyi is so revered in Hungary that an anthem to him, for choir and orchestra was composed in 2012 at the University of Szeged, which is incidentally also Karikó’s alma mater, and which she visited just a week after her own win last year, posing next to a life-size statue of him.
Living life to the fullest, Szent-Gyorgyi was passionate about motorcycles and cars and loved sports such as horse-riding, tennis, swimming, and gliding.
There are several of Szent-Gyorgyi’s wry comments and statements that are quotable quotes in the scientific community.
But it is my own fascination with how great men and women of the sciences respond to religion or thoughts about a Creator and the beginning of life that prompts me to end with
this quote: “I am not religious, but I am a pious man… A religious man has a definite religion. He says ‘God is there’ or ‘Your god is not my god, and that’s all.’ But the pious man, he just looks out with awe, and says, ‘Where is God?’ and ‘I don’t understand it and I would like to know what this creation really means.’ A pious man is really touched by
the greatness of nature and of
creation.”
