Albert Szent-Györgyi

Szent-Györgyi got married four times. He first married Cornelia Demény, daughter of the Hungarian Postmaster-General, in 1917. The couple had a daughter.

In 1941, he married Marta Borbiro Miskolczy, who died of cancer in 1963.

He next married June Susan Wichterman, the 25-year-old daughter of biologist Ralph Wichterman, in 1965. The marriage ended in a divorce three years later.||P

Szent-Györgyi was born on 16 September, 1893 in Budapest, Hungary. His father, Nicolaus von Szent-Györgyi, was a landowner and his mother, Josefine belonged to the famous Lenhossék family.

His maternal grandfather, Joseph Lenhossék and maternal uncle, MichaelLenhossék were both Professors of Anatomy at the University of Budapest. This influenced his interest in science right from childhood. Music was also encouraged among the Lenhossék family members and young Albert excelled in piano.

After his matriculation in 1911, he studied at his uncle's laboratory for some time. When World War I began, he served on the Italian and Russian fronts. However, he was against war and thus got eager to return to his studies. In desperation, he wounded himself to escape his warfare duties and was released in 1917.

After returning from the war, he completed his studies in Budapest. He then worked in turn with pharmacologist G. Mansfeld at Pozsony, Armin von Tschermak at Prague, and L. Michaelis in Berlin. Later, he did a two-year course in physical chemistry at the Institute for Tropical Hygiene, Hamburg.

In 1920, Szent-Györgyi joined the University Institute of Pharmacology in Leiden as a research assistant. From 1922 to 1926, he worked with H. J. Hamburger at the Physiology Institute, Groningen, Netherlands.

In 1927, a Rockefeller Fellowship took him to Cambridge where he worked under F. G. Hopkins. He also spent a year at the Mayo Foundation, Rochester, Minnesota, before returning to Cambridge. In 1930, he obtained the Chair of Medical Chemistry at the University of Szeged and in 1935 he also took the Chair of Organic Chemistry.

In 1937, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion process with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid”.

In 1938, he discovered the proteins actin, myosin and their complex while researching the biophysics of muscle movement. He found that the combination of these proteins and energy aided muscle contraction. His findings formed the groundwork of muscle research in the next decades.

In 1940, he offered his Nobel Prize money to Finland in support of Hungarian volunteers who travelled to Finland to fight against the Soviet Union during the Winter War of 1939–1940.

His early researches concerned cell respiration. He described the interdependence of oxygen and hydrogen activation and also demonstrated the existence of a reducing substance in plant and animal tissues.

At Cambridge and in the US, he isolated the reducing substance from adrenals, now known as ascorbic acid. He exhibited the anti-scurvy property of ascorbic acid and discovered that paprika was a rich source of vitamin C.

Some of his famous publications are ‘On Oxidation, Fermentation, Vitamins, Health, and Disease’ (1940), ‘Introduction to a Submolecular Biology’ (1960), ‘The Crazy Ape’ (1970), ‘Electronic Biology and Cancer: A New Theory of Cancer’ (1976), and ‘Bioelectronics: a study in cellular regulations, defence and cancer’.