Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 125-132. (Budapest, 1989-1990)

ADATTÁR - DOCUMENTATIONS - Kovács-Csoma, Mária: Medals of Nobel laureates in the medal cabinet of the Semmelweis Museum of History of Medicine

MEDALS OF NOBEL LAUREATES IN THE MEDAL CABINET OF THE SEMMELWEIS MUSEUM OF HISTORY OF MEDICINE MÁRIA KOVÁCS-CSOMA The name of the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel was preserved for posterity not only for his inventing dynamite and for his many other inventions. Towards the end of his active life he made provisions relative to his imense fortune in a way that might be of benefit to the whole of humanity. He invested the greatest part of his fortune in a foundation bearing his name. With the interests of the foundation he wished to award yearly scientists, writers and figures in public life who, by their activities, yielded the greatest benefits to humanity. He indicated five fields in which to award performance: medicine/physiology, physics, chemistry, literature and strengthening of fraternal love betwen peoples. In our present study we will deal in detail with the Nobel-prize of medicine/physiology. This was awarded every year since 1901, except for the war-years. Thus it was not awarded 1915—1918 and 1940—42 but similarly either 1921 and 1925. Thus, till 1988, a total of 148 persons have been awarded the Nobel prize in medicine. When studying the list of the laureates it can be observed that up to 1920 one person was yearly awarded, in general, while from this time on the number of cases increased where two persons and, from 1940 on very often three persons were yearly awarded the prize for joint research or work carried out in parallel. In these cases, when studying the research themes, several variations can be found. E.g. in 1922 Hill and Meyerhof were awarded the prize. Hill for discovering the formation of muscular heat, and Meyerhof for discovering the relationship between oxygen consumption and muscular lactic acid. The investigations of Hill and Meyerhof completed each other excellently. There was a close scientific cooperation between them. In 1954 Enders-Robbins-Weiler were awarded the prize for their joint work on Ûi£„discovery of cultivation possibilities of the poliomyelitis virus in different tissue cultures". In 1953 Krebs and Lipmann were the two awarded persons. They were awarded for successful research carried out independently from each other. Krebs was recognized for discovering the citric acid cycle and Lipmann for discovering coenzyme-A and recognizing its importance in intermediary metabolism. Among the laureates we can find, beside physicians, also chemists, physicists and zoologists who, by their inventions, promoted medicine. Statistics shows that the greatest number of discoveries and those of the greatest purport were made in the fields of bacteriology and physiology. In the last three decades research on DNS, DRS and genetics were awarded primarily. How does all this appear in numismatics? The appearance of these outstanding scientists on medals, the frequency of their appearance indicate the places they occupy in social awareness and public thinking. Inscriptions of the medals often indicate, beside the most important biographical data, the fact that the persons have been awarded the Nobel prize. The cabinet of medals of the Semmelweis Museum of the History of Medicine preserves medals on 17 Nobel laureates. Fifteen of them have been awarded the Nobel prize for medicine/physiology, one of them for physics and one for chemistry. Medals on the Nobel laureate in physics Röntgen have obtained a place already in the collection of Géza Faludy and in other medal collections abroad. The medal of György Hevesy who had obtained the Nobel prize in chemistry was also included in our collection as the discoveries of both scientists contributed to a great extent to the development of medicine as well. Albert Szent-Györgyi was the only one to be awarded the Nobel-prize as Hungarian subject in 1937. However, several people of Hungarian origin can be found among the laureates. According to his biographers, Robert Bárány, the Nobel laureate in medicine of the year 1914 was of Austro-Hungarian