(A Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Szent-Györgyi concerns himself ...)
A Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Szent-Györgyi concerns himself with the underlying forces and conditions that have prevented the realization of the higher possibilities of the American Dream, and, by extension, of all mankind. He addresses himself especially to the youth of the world in his attempt to show how man, the more he progresses technologically, seems the more to regress psychologically and socially, until he resembles his primate ancestors in a state of high schizophrenia. The fundamental question asked by this book is: Why is it that most of the scientific research that is done to elevate human life serves in the end to destroy it? That this phenomenon exists is unarguable. How to alter it is the problem the author tackles. He finds the possibility, indeed the instrument of our survival, in our youth. Dr. Szent-Györgyi calls upon youth the world over to organize and exercise their power to create a new world. He implores them not to waste their energies in petulance and frustration?the world is ripe for the radical changes needed for mans survival, and for youth to fritter away their opportunity would be to compound the tragedy and seal the fate of mankind. Born into the fourth generation of a noted family of scientists in Hungary, Albert Szent-Györgyi decided at an early age to devote his life to biological research. As a medical student he required international recognition for his studies in microscopic anatomy. The First World War, which he spent in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army, caused a break in his career. After the war he left his devastated country to work for ten years in various countries, notably Germany, Holland, England and the United States. He then returned to his native Hungary to help rebuild science there. In 1937, he won the Nobel Prize for his studies on metabolism and for the discovery of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). He soon found himself in conflict with the growing movement of Nazism, was arrested, escaped, and was hunted for years by the secret service of Hitler. After World War II, disappointed by Soviet colonialism and the terrorist methods of Stalin, he left Hungary and found refuge at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
(The Living State: With Observations on Cancer explores so...)
The Living State: With Observations on Cancer explores some facets of life, including its pattern and structure, cellular mechanisms, and its connection with biochemistry and biophysics. It reflects the authors journey in his desire to understand life by looking at cells, animals, bacteria, molecules, and electrons, as well as his observations on cancer.
Organized into eight chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the scientific community's longstanding pursuit to understand life and its origins. It then discusses water as an essential medium of organic matter on which life's machinery is built, along with the motion of muscle; biological stability and the paradox of evolution; the energetics of the biosphere based on the interaction of hydrogen and oxygen; the principles of defense against cellular damage; and how defense is linked to the regulation of growth in plants and animals. The reader is also introduced to growth regulation as a defense mechanism, which corrects mechanical injury in animals; the way that ketone aldehydes inhibit cell division; the theory of cancer; and cancer therapy.
Biologists, chemists, and physicists will find this book an interesting read.
Albert Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrápolt was a Hungarian biochemist.
Background
Szent-Györgyi was born on September 16, 1893 in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1893. His father, Miklós Szent-Györgyi, was a landowner, born in Marosvásárhely, Transylvania (today Târgu Mureş, Romania), a Calvinist, and could trace his ancestry back to 1608 when Sámuel, a Calvinist predicant, was ennobled. At the time of Szent-Györgyi's birth, being of the nobility was considered important and created opportunities that otherwise were not available. Miklós Szent-Györgyi's parents were Imre Szent-Györgyi and Mária Csiky. His mother, Jozefina, a Roman Catholic, was a daughter of József Lenhossék and Anna Bossányi. Jozefina was a sister of Mihály Lenhossék; both of these men were Professors of Anatomy at the Eötvös Loránd University. His family included three generations of scientists. Music was important in the Lenhossék family. His mother Jozefina prepared to become an opera singer and auditioned for Gustav Mahler, then a conductor at the Budapest Opera. He advised her to marry instead, since her voice was not enough. Albert himself was good at the piano, while his brother Pál became a professional violinist.
Education
He became a medical student at the University of Budapest in 1911. His studies were interrupted by World War I, when he joined the military and was wounded in battle. Upon discharge from the army he resumed his studies and graduated in 1917 as a doctor of medicine.
Later, he did a two-year course in physical chemistry at the Institute for Tropical Hygiene, Hamburg.
Career
He worked from 1922 to 1926 as an assistant in the Institute of Physiology of the University of Groningen.
By 1920 there was great interest in the method whereby the energy of the foodstuff molecule was released and utilized by the living cell. It was realized that the process could not be one of "slow combustion" with molecular oxygen, as the heat produced in such a process would have destroyed the living cell. Otto Warburg held that the liberation of the foodstuff's energy was the result of oxidation of the foodstuff molecule by activated oxygen. Heinrich Wieland argued that the release of energy was due to loss of hydrogen by the foodstuff molecule. Chemically, the two processes are equivalent. In 1924 Warburg isolated his "respiratory enzyme, " which activated oxygen and allowed it to be taken up by the foodstuff molecule. This discovery strongly favored Warburg's theory.
At Groningen, Szent-Györgyi studied biological oxidation in the animal cell. Warburg had studied the inhibition of cell respiration—that is, oxidation by activated oxygen— by cyanide. It was known that methylene blue acts as an artificial hydrogen acceptor (H-acceptor). In minced tissue Szent-Györgyi now inhibited oxygen activation by cyanide and then added methylene blue. The dye lost its blue color, showing that it had acted as an H-acceptor and that respiration had been restored. He thus clearly demonstrated that in cell respiration the two processes of oxygen activation and hydrogen activation were both active.
While at Groningen, Szent-Györgyi became interested in the bronze pigmentation of the skin in Addison's disease, the cause of which was unknown. He decided to study the brown discoloration produced by injury in the catechol group of plants, and he clarified the method of its production. Nothing was known of the oxidative system of the peroxidase group of plants, which do not show this discoloration, except that they contain an active peroxidase which activates peroxide and that they can oxidize various pigments. He found that if peroxide was added to a mixture of peroxidase and benzidine an intense blue color appeared immediately. But if he repeated this reaction, using juice squeezed from a peroxidase plant instead of purified peroxidase, the blue color appeared only after a second or so. He concluded that the plant juice must also have contained a powerful reducing agent which reduced the oxidized benzidine until it had itself been used up. Arguing on these lines, he found that the adrenal cortex contained a similar reducing substance. The adrenal was a very rich source, but he later found that it was merely a storehouse for the substance.
At the invitation of Sir F. Gowland Hopkins, Szent-Györgyi spent the year 1927 at Cambridge University, where he isolated the reducing substance from adrenal glands, orange juice, and cabbage. With a thesis on this work he graduated as a doctor of philosophy. He found that the reducing agent had the empirical composition C6H8O6, and he called it provisionally hexuronic acid. As the enormous quantities of adrenals required for his further analysis were not available in Great Britain, he spent the year 1928 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. , where supplies of adrenal were available from the St. Paul slaughterhouses. In 1929 he returned to Cambridge with 25 grams of hexuronic acid. Most of this he gave to (Sir) Norman Haworth of the University of Birmingham and to other specialists in carbohydrate analysis.
In 1930 Szent-Györgyi became professor of medical chemistry at the University of Szeged in Hungary. He had long thought that hexuronic acid was vitamin C, and he was now joined by J. Svirbely, who was experienced in the necessary animal tests. In April 1932 they announced that they had, by the administration of one milligram of hexuronic acid daily, protected guinea pigs from scurvy for 56 days. Three weeks later they claimed the identity of hexuronic acid and vitamin C. Simultaneously Charles G. King and W. A. Waugh announced their isolation of crystalline vitamin C and its apparent identity with hexuronic acid. On the basis of these results Szent-Györgyi and Haworth changed the name hexuronic acid to ascorbic acid.
Szent-Györgyi's supply of ascorbic acid was now exhausted, but Szeged was the center of the paprika industry. He now, for the first time, tested paprika for the presence of ascorbic acid and found that it was a very rich source. He soon prepared several hundred grams for distribution to chemists. The structural formula of ascorbic acid was determined by Haworth in 1932, and by Paul Karrer in 1933. It was synthesized by Haworth, and independently by Tadeus Reichstein in 1933. Synthetic ascorbic acid was soon available commercially.
In 1925 David Keilin of Cambridge University rediscovered an intracellular pigment, which he called "cytochrome. " In living cells it showed a reversible oxidoreduction. It was fundamentally important in the final reaction of cell respiration, by which activated oxygen combined with activated hydrogen. It was later realized that Warburg's respiratory enzyme oxidized cytochrome, and the enzyme is now called cytochrome oxidase.
About 1926 Szent-Györgyi was intrigued by the peculiarities of succino-dehydrogenase. It was already known that this dehydrogenase could be inhibited by malonic acid, and he now showed that when he added malonic acid to minced tissue, respiration ceased. He concluded that succinic acid was not an ordinary metabolite but that it had to have some catalytic function. Following this observation Szent-Györgyi elucidated in succeeding years the role of the C4-dicarboxylic acids—oxaloacetic, malic, fumaric, and succinic, in that order—in transmitting hydrogen molecules along the chain from the foodstuff molecule to cytochrome, resulting in its final oxidation to water. At each link in the chain a portion of the energy of the foodstuff was released.
In the early stages of these researches Szent-Györgyi was interested in a fluorescent yellow pigment which showed reversible oxidation. He called it provisionally "cytoflav. " It was inactive when added to a test system. In 1932 Warburg described his "yellow enzyme" and showed that it consisted of two components—a specific protein and this yellow pigment; neither by itself had any catalytic action. This flavoprotein was later shown to be vitamin B2 (riboflavin). In 1937 Szent-Györgyi attempted to suggest its position in the cell respiratory system. For these researches he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1937.
About 1860 Willi Kühne extracted from muscle a protein that he called "myosin. " Little further was done until 1939, when it was found that purified myosin showed the properties of adenosine triphosphatase, an enzyme that splits off the terminal phosphate group of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), thus releasing energy. In 1939, at Szeged, Szent-Györgyi repeated Kühne's work, and in 1941, with L. Banga, he showed that two types of protein could be extracted from muscle, depending on the length of the extraction period. Extraction for 20 minutes yielded a protein of low viscosity, further lowered on addition of ATP. They called this protein "myosin. " Extraction overnight yielded a second protein which formed a loose complex with myosin, and it was this complex that constituted the "myosin" of Kühne. Banga and Szent-Györgyi called this second protein "actin, " and they showed that, if solutions of myosin and actin are mixed, the result is a solution of the loose complex which they called "actomyosin. " In 1941 Szent-Györgyi made threads of actomyosin by squirting a solution of this complex through a fine extruder into water. He then added ATP to the water and found that the threads contracted to about ten percent of their original length. In 1942 actin was isolated and characterized by Szent-Györgyi's pupil F. B. Straub, and in 1943 Szent-Györgyi prepared crystalline myosin and worked out a method for its purification.
In 1949 Szent-Györgyi introduced the glycerinated fiber bundle; a strip of muscle treated with glycerol can be kept to study the effects of ATP. In 1952-1953 he studied the "staircase effect" in heart muscle and the action of drugs on it.
During World War II Hungarian leaders asked Szent-Görgyi to try to rescue Hungary from the Nazi stranglehold. He made an adventurous journey to Istanbul to consult with British and American diplomats. On his return he found that Hitler had personally demanded his delivery. Smuggled by friends out of Budapest, he hid near the Soviet lines. Rescued on Molotov's personal order, he was taken to Moscow and treated as a distinguished scientist. After the war Szent-Györgyi accepted the chair of medical chemistry at Budapest, and he tried to help Hungary through political activity. But it was impossible to counteract communist influence. In 1947 he emigrated to the United States, where he founded the Institute for Muscle Research at Woods Hole Marine Laboratory, Mass.
Szent-Györgyi died on October 22, 1986 of kidney failure at his home in Woods Hole, Mass.
As the government of Gyula Gömbös and the associated Hungarian National Defence Association gained control of politics in Hungary, Szent-Györgyi helped his Jewish friends escape from the country. During World War II, he joined the Hungarian resistance movement. Although Hungary was allied with the Axis Powers, the Hungarian prime minister Miklós Kállay sent Szent-Györgyi to Cairo in 1944 under the guise of a scientific lecture to begin secret negotiations with the Allies. The Germans learned of this plot and Adolf Hitler himself issued a warrant for the arrest of Szent-Györgyi. He escaped from house arrest and spent 1944 to 1945 as a fugitive from the Gestapo.
After the war, Szent-Györgyi had become well-recognized as a public figure and there was some speculation that he might become President of Hungary, should the Soviets permit it. Szent-Györgyi established a laboratory at the University of Budapest and became head of the biochemistry department there. He was elected a member of Parliament and helped re-establish the Academy of Sciences. Dissatisfied with the Communist rule of Hungary, he emigrated to the United States in 1947.
In 1967, Szent-Györgyi signed a letter declaring his intention to refuse to pay taxes as a means of protesting the U. S. war against Vietnam, and urging other people to take a similar stand.
Views
Quotations:
"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought. "
"Water, the Hub of Life. Water is its mater and matrix, mother and medium. Water is the most extraordinary substance! Practically all its properties are anomolous, which enabled life to use it as building material for its machinery. Life is water dancing to the tune of solids. "
"A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind. "
"In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy. "
"Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend. "
"Think boldly. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't miss small details, keep your eyes open and be modest in everything except your aims. "
"Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. "
Membership
He was member of many scientific societies. He was President of the Academy of Sciences, Budapest, and a Vice-President of the National Academy, Budapest.
He was also a Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
He was a Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Interests
He was interested in all kinds of sports, especially sailing and alpinism.
Connections
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
His fourth wife was Marcia Houston, whom he married in 1975. The couple adopted a daughter named Lola von Szent-Györgyi.