Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1978. július-december (32. évfolyam, 27-50. szám)

1978-12-21 / 49. szám

Thursday, Dec. 21. 1978

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

BY ALBERT SZENTGYÖRGYI

I was never, interested in medicine, and did not know how little I knew, so I promptly failed. Now I had no diploma, no money, and hardly any knowledge. What saved the situation was that old Hamburger, the Professor of Physiology, wanted complicated operations performed on dogs, but all the animals died. He gave me a chance to try and the animals survived. Thereupon he offered me the position of assistant which just made life possible. The catastrophe came when Hamburger died and his successor thought biochemistry a washout. Only animal psychology was worth doing, and he found me a burden. When I presented my first paper to him, he advised me to use the wastepaper basket for it, whereupon 1 resigned. So there I was without money, without a job and knowledge; I prepared for the end and sent my wife home with our daughter. Before giving up, I wanted to enjoy science for a last time and went to Stockholm to attend the International Physiological Congress, organized by Professor Johansen. His honor chairman was Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who delivered the presidential address in which he mentioned my name several times. He happened to be interested in my little paper on poly phenoloxidase, which was turned down by my professor. So I picked up all my courage and introduced myself to Sir Gowland who invited me to Cambridge (England),promising to get a Rockefeller Fellowship for me. This he did.

For a Hungarian, life in the postwar /World War 1/ years in Europe was very unpleasant because political hatred lingered long in the atmosphere, and it made traveling very difficult and humiliating. The first really international outlook, I found in Cambridge, which I still regard as my scientific homeland. Here I completed my Ph.D,degree with the isolation of ascorbic acid, going for a year to the Mayo Clinic, where I could prepare in Kendall’s laboratory twenty grams of this acid from adrenal glands. This material I gave to the leading carbohydrate chemist, Professor Haworth, to clear up the constitution. He used it up without establishing itá formula.

IGNOSCO AND GODNOSE

Originally I called ascorbic acid “ignosco”, not knowing what it was /ignosco meaning, I don’t know/. Harden, the editor of the Biochemistry Journal reprimanded me for making jokes about science. My proposition “Godnose” was not more successful. Eventually, with Professor Haworth, we called the substance ascorbic acid after its identity with Vitamin C was established. I found ascorbic acid by accident and never really was interested in it. My method of working is this. I fill my head with crazy theories and then do simple experiments, suggested by them, keeping my eyes open for the unexpected. Then I was interested in “peroxidase systems”, and I found that the benzidine peroxidase reaction, occuring with plant juices, showed a very short delay. Pursuing it I found that it was due to the presence of a reducing agent, which I isolated and identified later with vitamin C. Ascorbic acid could be -rystallized on a large scale only from adrenal glands which were available in quantity only in the United States. I tried all the plants I could lay my hands on to no avail.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO

Knbinyia people’s artist

of the great artists of our and all times, committed himself early in his life to the service of progress. Mr. Kubinvi obtained the technical foundations of his art by studying at the Boston Museum School, the School of Visual Arts in New York, the Art Students League of New York and the Escuela de Pintura e Sculptura in Mexico City.

Through his drawings, illustrations, placards Mr. Kubinyi helped many great popular movements. His illustrations decorated many of our own publications, among which we may mention the cover of the 70th anniversary album of the Magyar Szo.

Jt was through a coincidence that we found out about the genealogy of Mr. Kubinyi’s family, for he never mentions it in public. The Kubinyi family is one of the oldest in Hungary, it is at least as old as many of the former “aristocratic” families of that country, at least as old as the Habsburg House itself.

His family traces its roots back to the 13th century. An ancestor, named Hudkont obtained in 1233 through a royal grant the villages of Also and Felső Revucsa in the county of Arva from King Andrew /King of Hungarv and of Jerusalem/. The history of the family was written up by Peter Kubinyi in 1832. This two-volume familv history was republished around the turn of the century. One of the existing ten copies is a cherished family treasure of László Kubinyi.

Anca Vrbovskä .

HER EVES SINO LIFE

Her eyes sing :LIFE as she walks with the

unconscious beauty and pride of a

fruit tree

the gray city streets.

Between two of her boys each clinging to her hand

as does

fruit to a twig.

A smile

she is unaware of

lights up her face and

her eyes sing :Life.

Passersbye stop to stare at the

smiling woman beautiful and proud

as a fruit tree investing with

light, color,

and

Life

the drabness of winter-gray city streets.

THE ROMANS IN HUNGARY'

(cont. from p. 10.)

found, in one case ornamented with colored tiles. Hot water was brought from the natural springs nearby, from which the local name Római Furdó /Roman Baths/ originates. Lavoratories, complete with running water, were part of private dwellings and each owner paid forthe water he used.

We want to stress that today these two thousand year old ruins don’t fully express their former beauty and monumentality. One can see only fragments of walls, without their plaster and decorations.

Where does the evocative power of such ruins lie? Why does the story of the grieving organist Aelius and his wife move us? It is just here that one’s own life comes out of the past, not just the personal history of any single individual. And it is clear that Marx in the words quoted above does not refer only to the childhood of mankind, that much more, every period which is a moment in a peculiar and never recurring past, can actually be experienced by us today.

In the very building where our paper is produced there works one of the outstanding young artists of our time, László Kubinyi.

In our time an artist has to make up his mind early in his career whether his objective will be personal aggrandizement or the service of humanity, László Kubinyi, following in the footsteps of his father, Kalman Kubinyi and in a larger sense many