Albert Szent-Györgyi

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Lore & Background

Szent-Györgyi was born in Budapest on September 16, 1893, into a family of scientists. He began studies at Semmelweis University in 1911, then started research in his uncle's anatomy lab. His studies were interrupted in 1914 to serve as an army medic in World War I. In 1916, disgusted with the war, he shot himself in the arm, claimed to be wounded from enemy fire, and was sent home on medical leave. He finished his medical education and received his MD in 1917. He married Kornélia Demény, daughter of the Hungarian Postmaster General, that same year. After the war, his research career took him to the University of Groningen, then to the University of Cambridge as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, where he received his PhD in 1929. His research involved isolating an organic acid, which he called 'hexuronic acid,' from adrenal gland tissue. He accepted a position at the University of Szeged in 1930. There, with research fellow Joseph Svirbely, he found that hexuronic acid was actually vitamin C. In some experiments they used paprika as the source. He also identified fumaric acid and other steps in what became the Krebs cycle. He received the Nobel Prize in 1937. In 1938 he began work on muscle movement, finding that muscles contain actin, which when combined with myosin and ATP, contract muscle fibers. During World War II, he helped Jewish friends escape Hungary and joined the resistance. He was sent to Istanbul in 1944 for secret negotiations with the Allies, leading to a warrant for his arrest by Adolf Hitler. He escaped house arrest and spent 1944 to 1945 as a fugitive from the Gestapo. After the war, he emigrated to the United States in 1947. He established the Institute for Muscle Research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955.

Reader's Guide

Albert Szent-Györgyi's significance lies in his foundational contributions to biochemistry, particularly the isolation of vitamin C and elucidation of the citric acid cycle and muscle contraction. His work on vitamin C, initially called hexuronic acid, directly addressed scurvy. His identification of fumaric acid and other steps in cellular respiration provided key insights into energy metabolism, later formalized as the Krebs cycle. In muscle physiology, his discovery of actin and its interaction with myosin and ATP explained the molecular basis of contraction. Beyond his laboratory achievements, Szent-Györgyi's career reflects a pattern of interdisciplinary thinking, moving from biochemistry to quantum biology and cancer research. He divided scientists into Apollonians and Dionysians, advocating for support of intuitive, risk-taking researchers. His political activism—including helping Jews during the Holocaust, negotiating with Allies, and protesting the Vietnam War—demonstrates his engagement beyond science. His legacy endures in the understanding of redox signaling and the ongoing study of free radicals in cancer.

Did You Know?

• Szent-Györgyi shot himself in the arm in 1916 to escape World War I, claiming it was enemy fire.
• He offered all of his 1937 Nobel Prize money to Finland in 1940.
• He used paprika as a source of vitamin C in some experiments.
• Adolf Hitler personally issued a warrant for his arrest in 1944.
• He proposed the term 'syntropy' in 1974 to replace 'negentropy.'

Scientific Breakthroughs and the Nobel

Albert Szent-Györgyi's body of work spans several foundational discoveries in twentieth-century biochemistry. At the University of Szeged in 1930, working alongside fellow researcher Joseph Svirbely, he demonstrated that the organic compound he had earlier isolated from adrenal gland tissue—originally dubbed hexuronic acid—was in fact the long-sought antiscorbutic factor, later formally named L-ascorbic acid after Walter Norman Haworth determined its structure. Simultaneously, his ongoing investigations into cellular respiration led him to identify fumaric acid and additional steps in the pathway that would eventually be recognized as the Krebs cycle. His most celebrated contribution to muscle physiology came in 1938, when he showed that muscles contain actin, which when combined with the protein myosin and the energy source ATP, contract muscle fibers. These achievements earned him the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the 1946 Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh, and the 1954 Lasker Award.

Conviction, War, and Personal Sacrifice

Szent-Györgyi's life was marked by moments of fierce personal conviction. During World War I, while serving as an army medic, he grew so disgusted with the conflict that in 1916 he deliberately shot himself in the arm, claimed the wound was from enemy fire, and secured medical leave that allowed him to return home and complete his medical degree. In 1940, he offered all of his Nobel Prize money to Finland, a gesture made in the shadow of the Soviet invasion and the Winter War, during which Hungarian volunteers had traveled to fight for the Finns. His independence extended into academic funding. After the death of his financial backer Stephen Rath, Szent-Györgyi found himself in severe monetary difficulty. He steadfastly refused to write government grant proposals minutely specifying his research methods and expected results. It was only after he spoke publicly about his financial struggles in a 1971 newspaper interview that attorney Franklin Salisbury helped him establish the National Foundation for Cancer Research.

A Household of Science and Music

Born in Budapest in 1893 into a family where intellectual and artistic pursuits ran in parallel, Szent-Györgyi grew up surrounded by both. His father, Miklós Szent-Györgyi, was a Calvinist landowner whose noble lineage traced back to 1608 when Sámuel, a Calvinist predicant, was ennobled—a distinction that still carried real social weight at the time of Albert's birth. His mother, Jozefina, a Roman Catholic, had trained to become an opera singer and auditioned for Gustav Mahler while he conducted at the Budapest Opera; he advised her to marry instead, since her voice was not enough. The Lenhossék side of the family produced two professors of anatomy at Eötvös Loránd University, including Szent-Györgyi's uncle Mihály Lenhossék, in whose laboratory Albert first conducted research after enrolling at Semmelweis University in 1911. Music permeated the household: Albert himself played the piano well, while his brother Pál became a professional violinist. In 1917, the same year he received his MD, Albert married Kornélia Demény, daughter of the Hungarian Postmaster General.

Woods Hole, Cancer, and a Final Frontier

From 1947 until his death in 1986, Szent-Györgyi maintained a continuous research presence at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he established the Institute for Muscle Research with backing from Hungarian businessman Stephen Rath. A practical innovation from this period—storing whole muscle tissue in a fifty-percent glycerol solution at low temperatures so it retained contractility almost indefinitely—eliminated the constant need for fresh specimens. In the 1950s he turned to electron microscopes to examine muscle at the subunit level. Yet his intellectual curiosity kept expanding. Beginning in 1941, he explored the intersection of quantum mechanics and cancer biochemistry, eventually viewing cancer as fundamentally an electronic problem at the molecular level and investigating free radicals as a potential cause. In 1974 he proposed the term 'syntropy' as a replacement for 'negentropy.' His later work is recognized as an important precursor to modern understanding of redox signaling. His protégé Ralph Moss captured this restless final chapter in the biography Free Radical: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and the Battle over Vitamin C.