Albert Szent-Györgyi

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Albert Szent-Györgyi, ca.1948
Bust and plaque in Szeged

Albert Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrápolt ( Hungarian nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert ) [ nɒɟraːpoltɪ ˈsɛntɟørɟi ˈɒlbɛrt ] (born September 16, 1893 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary ; † October 22, 1986 in Woods Hole , Massachusetts ) was a Hungarian-American Physicians , biochemists , Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine for the isolation of ascorbic acid (vitamin C).

Life

Albert Szent-Györgyi was born in Budapest in 1893 . His father Miklós von Szent-Györgyi came from Marosvásárhely in Transylvania and belonged to the local Hungarian nobility. He was of the Calvinist denomination. His mother Jozefin, b. Lenhossék, was a Roman Catholic and came from a middle-class academic family. Szent-Györgyi began studying medicine at the previous institution of today's Semmelweis University in Budapest in 1911 , until he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army at the beginning of the First World War . He served on the Italian and Russian fronts until 1917 and was awarded for bravery. After being wounded, he was withdrawn from the front. In 1917 he married Kornélia Demény, the daughter of the Hungarian post minister, and completed her studies in human medicine .

After the war, Szent-Györgyi devoted himself to pharmacology , completed his studies in Budapest and went to Prague (to Armin Tschermak-Seysenegg ), later Berlin, where he devoted himself to further studies in physiology . At the Tropical Institute of the University of Hamburg he studied physical chemistry for two years , as well as in Leiden (from 1920, as an assistant at the Pharmacological Institute) and from 1922 to 1926 with Hamburger at the Physiological Institute of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where he specialized in biochemistry qualified as a professor. In 1927 he went to Fitzwilliam College , Cambridge as a Rockefeller Fellow . There and during a guest stay in Rochester , he made his first discoveries in ascorbic acid . In 1930 he took up a position as professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Szeged in Hungary. In 1934 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . After the end of the Second World War , Szent-Györgyi first moved to Budapest and then emigrated to the United States in 1947 ; In 1955 he became an American citizen. In 1947 he became head of the Muscle Research Institute of the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole (Massachusetts) . In the same year he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1956 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1957 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He retired in 1966 . From his second marriage to his colleague Márta Borbíró there is a daughter.

The Medical University in Szeged , separated from the University of Szeged in 1957, was called Albert Szent Györgyi University for Medical Sciences from 1987 onwards . In 2000 it went back to the University of Sciences in Szeged ; the medical faculty is still named after Albert Szent-Györgyi. The US National Foundation for Cancer Research has awarded the Szent-Györgyi Prize for cancer research since 2006 . On September 16, 2011, Google remembered Szent-Györgyi's 118th birthday with a doodle .

Significant achievements

Albert Szent-Györgyi, ca.1948

In 1926, Szent-Györgyi isolated ascorbic acid (vitamin C) from plant and tissue extracts by means of crystallization experiments. In the following years he investigated the newly discovered substance while working at the universities of Cambridge, Rochester and Szeged and identified it in 1932 as the "vitamin C" that was postulated in 1912 and effective against scurvy .

Other important works by Szent-Györgyi concern the body's own carbohydrate metabolism, in particular the citric acid cycle , and the role of the energy carrier adenosine triphosphate in muscle cells. Among other things, Szent-Györgyi proved that the active oxygen oxidizes the active hydrogen . The Szent-Györgyi-Krebs cycle was named after him and a friend of the Nobel Prize laureate Hans Krebs (this name is mainly used in Hungary, elsewhere this component of aerobic glycolysis is known as the Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle). " For his discoveries in the field of biological combustion processes, especially in relation to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid ", he received the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine . After the Nobel Prize, he achieved important successes in the field of muscle contraction for the understanding of muscle biology , thereby doing preparatory work a. a. for Setsurō Ebashi . In the 1930s he discovered the bioflavonoids , which he initially referred to as vitamin P. - The flavonoids are secondary plant substances .

1970, his socially critical book was The Crazy Ape ( The lack developed monkey ), in which he deals with a one-sided fixation of today's society on technological progress.

Publications (selection)

  • On Oxidation, Fermentation, Vitamins, Health and Disease. Baltimore 1939.
  • Chemistry of Muscular Contraction. New York 1947
  • Nature of Life. New York 1947
  • Contraction in Body and Heart Muscle. New York 1953
  • Bioenergetics. New York 1957
  • Introduction to a Submolecular Biology , 1960
  • The Crazy Ape , 1970
  • The Living State. With Observations on Cancer , 1972

literature

  • Edgar Wöhlisch: Albert Szent-Györgyi. The discoverer of vitamin C . In: Hans Schwerte , Wilhelm Spengler (Ed.): Researchers and Scientists in Today's Europe , Part 2: Doctors, Biologists, Anthropologists (= Shaper of Our Time , Volume 4). Stalling, Oldenburg 1955, DNB 451322002 , pp. 151-157.
  • Winfried R. Pötsch (Ed.): Lexicon of important chemists. Deutsch, Thun / Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 978-3-8171-1055-1 , pp. 414-415.
  • Ralph Moss: Free Radical Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and the Battle over Vitamin C Paragon House Publishers, New York 1988, ISBN 0-913729-78-7 .
  • Manfred Wenzel: Szent-Györgyi from Nagyrapolt, Albert. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1374 f.

Web links

Commons : Albert Szent-Györgyi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member entry by Albert Szent-Györgyi (with picture) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on June 20, 2016.
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 238.
  3. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 13, 2019 .
  4. ^ Doodle on the 118th birthday of Szent-Györgyi from September 16, 2011
  5. ↑ St. Rusznyak, Albert Szent-Györgyi: Vitamin P: flavonols as vitamins. In: Nature. Volume 138, 1936, p. 27.
personal data
SURNAME Szent-Györgyi, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Szent-Györgyi from Nagyrápolt, Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1986
Place of death Woods Hole , Massachusetts