Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

Michael Somogyi, Ph. D., a pioneer both in the preparation of insulin and its use in the treatment of diabetes mellitus. He was born at Horváth Zsáma, Hungary (now Reinersdorf, Austria) in 1883, and died at age 88 in US in 1969. H>) received his degree in chemical engineering at the Technical University of Budapest where he worked as junior lecturer in biochemistry for a year. Then he moved to the United States, but only found employment as a wagon driver for a physician and later as a worker in a rope factory. When finally his credentials arrived he was employed as a lecturer in biochemistry by Cornell University Medical College from 1906 to 1908. He returned to Budapest to serve as head chemist of the Municipal Laboratory, and earned his Ph. D. degree from the University of Budapest in 1914. His doctoral dissertation treated of Catalitic Hydrogénation. In 1922 he returned to the US where he became an Instructor in Biological Chemistry at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Together with Dr. Schaffer and E. A. Doisy, Ph. D., the Nobel Prize winner biochemist who later contributed to the isolation and synthesis of vitamin K, he developed a method for insulin preparation that is still in us for commercial production. In 1926 he was appointed as the first biochemist at the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis a position which he held until his retirement in 1957. Dr. Somogyi published over 70 papers on the various aspects of clinical chemistry including the preparation and purification of insulin, the measurement (in Somogyi units) and significance of diastase (amylase) fermentation, the measurements of blood potassium, the determination of glucose and ketone bodies in blood and urine, the determination of glycogen, and the physiology of action of insulin and other hormones. The effect discussed in his last papers is now known all over the world as the „Somogyi Effect", the essence of which can be summarized: „Hypoglycemia begets hyperglycemia". In recognition of his scientific work Dr. Somogyi was singled out for distinction by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Budapest in 1914. A „Somogyi Prize" is awarded annually to the author of the best Hungarian publications in laboratory diagnostics by the Hungarian Society of Clinical Pathology. Loránd Jendrassik (1896—1970) was born and died in Budapest, received his degree of doctor of medicine from the University of Budapest in 1921. After study visits to Pharmacological and Physiological University Departments in the Netherlands and Germany, he was in charge of the laboratory of the Medical Department of the University of Pécs (Hungary) from 1924 to 1940. In 1940 he was appointed head of the Department of Physiology in the University of Kolozsvár (now Cluj, Rumania). Then, from 1950 on, he led the Department of General Physiology in the University of Budapest, not without problems. He dealt with the chemical solution of clinical problems, in which his thorough grounding in methodology was of great help to him. He was also interested in general analytical problems: the determination in blood serum of phosphorus, potassium, sodium, calcium, glucose, urea, nitrite, in analysis of urinary calculi (uric acid, oxalic acid) and in the measurement of haemoglobin and protein. The determination of bilirubin intrigued him throughout his life and it was in 1936 and 1938, he was 40 years of age when he published in Biochem. Zeitschrift the bilirubin determination known all over the world even today. He elaborated his quantitative method using then the modern Zeiss-Pulfrich photometer, a method modified by