Albert Szent-Györgyi (redirected from Albert Szent-Gyorgyi von Nagyrapolt)

Szent-Györgyi, Albert 

Born Sept. 16, 1893, in Budapest. Hungarian-American biochemist. Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1956) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957).

Szent-Györgyi graduated from the University of Budapest in 1917 with the degree of doctor of medicine. In the years 1922–1926 he worked in the Netherlands and then in Great Britain. He received the Ph.D. degree from Cambridge University in 1927, and from that year until 1930 he worked at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. In 1930 he returned to Hungary, where he was a professor at the University of Szeged from 1931 to 1945 and at the University of Budapest from 1945 to 1947. In 1944 he participated in the Resistance Movement. Beginning in 1947, Szent-Györgyi worked in the United States at the Marine Biological Laboratories and the Institute for Muscle Research.

Szent-Györgyi has studied processes of biological oxidation. He isolated ascorbic acid from animal and plant tissues and showed that the acid is identical to vitamin C. He established that riboflavine belongs to the vitamin B₂ complex. He also discovered and experimentally verified the mechanism for the catalytic action of fumaric, malic, and succinic acids on tissue respiration. In addition, he studied the properties of actin and myosin and formulated a number of theories on muscular contraction. Szent-Györgyi received a Nobel Prize in 1937. He is a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1947) and an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1945).

WORKS

Chemistry of Muscular Contraction, 2nd ed. New York, 1951.
Egy biológus gondolatai. Budapest, 1970.
In Russian translation:
O myshechnoi deiatel’nosti. Moscow, 1947.
Bioenergelika. Moscow, 1960.
Vvedenie v submolekuliarnuiu biologiiu. Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCE

Wurmser, R. “Al’bert Stsent-D’erd’i i sovremennaia biokhimiia.” In Gorizonty biokhimii. Moscow, 1964. (Translated from English.)

S. S. KRIVOBOKOVA and T. IU. LIPSKAIA