ALBERT SZEtfl'-oIORGYI




•t1eaal Library et llediciDB
    Betheada1 Haryland
           1967
                                                                        l




Penzance Point, Monday, June 19, 1967.



        Turn it off.   What are we going to talk about?    Let's talk about that

first.

        Now, can you check the voice?


Yes.     Would you like to hear it?


        Yes.


Well, what I would like you to do is to give me some sense of that to which

you fell heir in terms of place--Hungary, the society, its structure.


        Yes.   Well, Hungary was a feudalistic country, and feudalism was a ne­

cessity in the early days.      It's not a bad system.    It was something based

on the human craving for power.        It was a necessary thing in the Middle

Ages.     I mean, as I can see it, the origin of feudalism is this, that in

the Middle Ages, or earlier, you never knew when a country would be attacked

from an outside force like a Tartar, and there being no wireless and no com­

munication, the enemy arrived first--not the news first, but the enemy ar­

rived suddenly, so one had only a few hours, or a few days.        It had to be

a system with one man standing in the tower, the King, and the King had his

Barons, and the Barons had their Vassals who were the soldiers, so the King

only had to tell the Barons when the enemy arrived, and then the army was

suddenly collected.      It was a necessary system--feudalism.

        Naturally, when I was young, it was already somewhat outdated.      It

was based on social injustice.        There was a very big sheet of population

which was very poor.      It had its liberty only on paper.    It was actually
                                                                        2




a sort of sophisticated slave status.     My father--well, feudalism was very

pleasant if you were born on the right side of the fence, and I happened

to have been born on the right side of the fence.     You see, my father--he

was a big landowner.     He had over two thousand acres of good land.       He was

a big landowner, and I remember the workmen--the peasants we called them-­

they had each a little house, a very small house, which consisted of a

kitchen, a very primitive kitchen with a room to the right and a room to

the left, and two families lived in that little house.     They had the right

to keep hogs in a limited number, and they had grain, so that they could

feed all right in a very primitive way.     They had a very low salary.       I

just happen to remember I asked once a young man how much salary he got

from my father, and that was fifty florins--about five dollars a year-­

which was just enough to buy a pair of boots, or something he really badly

needed, because all the rest was done at home--even woven at home.          It was

a very primitive society.

     I was born on the right side of the fence.     I belonged to the white

collar group and even to the low degree of nobility--you know, because

those officers of the King of the lowest level--they were still noblemen,

and that means that they paid no taxes.     Then there was only one sheet be­

low them--their servants and their peasants, so I belonged to the nobility

in a way, not to the high aristocracy, but to the well-to-do, governing,

dominating class.   [The phone rang.]    I think I have to answer that.

     I was never very conscious of these social differences because it was

so natural to me that I belonged to the leading class, and the peasants had

a simple life.   They were peasants, and that was that.    There was a great

difference in outlook.     A gentleman, a nobleman, wouldn't do anything with
                                                                        3




his hands.    Only intellectual occupations were acceptable in society.          Noth­

ing which was in any way connected with physical labor was acceptable, but

all this was quite natural to me, and I was not conscious of these social

injustices.     I became conscious of them much later, of course.


I wonder if there was any separation between you and the peasantry on the

two thousand acres?


     It was in a way a complete separation--yes.     I don't remember having

played with a peasant boy--you see.     My father had a so-called somebody un­

der him who supervised the whole thing.     His son was still acceptable, but

otherwise with the peasant boys we were completely separated.       It was some­

thing quite natural that it should be that way.

     My family on father's side belonged to this landowner class who were

bureaucrats--high bureaucrats.     That was also an acceptable thing.       My

grandfather on father's side--he was one of the leading judges of the Su­

preme Court, some high official.     Further up--his father had a very high

position.     We had a revolution in 1848, which then misfired in the end.

My great grandfather--he was employed at the Court in Vienna.       He was the

Representative of the King.     In 1848, in the revolution, he came to Hun­

gary representing the person of the King, and he lost his job on two ac­

counts--he was kicked out later--namely, in his heart he was a good Hun­

garian.     Though he was in the Austrian Court and represented the King, he

was a good Hungarian.     The Hungarian Parliament at the beginning of the

revolution seemed to be on the way to winning the whole revolution, and

they voted the unification of Transylvania with Hungary.     Until then

Transylvania was looked upon as a colony belonging to the Emperor, so it
                                                                      4




had nothing to do with Hungary, as it were, but the Revolutionary Parlia­

ment voted the unification of Hungary with Transylvania--that is, the east­

ern part with the rest.     My great grandfather received the order from the

King to sign the law, but with that mentality of the Austrian Court he was

meant not to sign it.     You see, the Emperor wanted him, expected him to re­

fuse signing.   The Emperor admitted, or agreed, but his representative re­

fused.   Everything would have been fine, but my great grandfather was a

good Hungarian, and he signed the bill which is still valid and unified

Hungary with Transylvania.     His name is on that bill.

     The other mistake he made, a mistake in his career, was that the Par­

liament began to suspect the King, or the Emperor of Austria.      The Emperor

of Austria was our King.     It was a personal union.   The Revolutionary Par­

liament began to suspect that the Emperor had stolen the Hungarian crown

which was holy to every Hungarian.     It represented the Hungarian country,

and the Revolutionary Parliament voted that a committee should go and see

the crown, see whether it was still in its place in the Royal Palace, and

my great grandfather was the leader of the committee.      This again was an

awful sin in the eye of the Austrian Emperor who wanted to have Hungary as

a colony, so to speak.

     My great grandfather had a third sin--he had eight sons, and all eight

were in the revolutionary army, so he had so many points against him that

he was kicked out as Representative of the Austrian Emperor after the re­

volution--naturally.

     Further back I have not much information--there were officers.       The

one who got the nobility in the 17th Century was an officer, a captain.

     I had one remarkable member in my family three or four generations
                                                                     5




back, a man who got fed up with the world and took his Horatius, Book of

Horatius, the Bible, and his cow and went out into the wilderness and never

came back again, so there was some queerness in the family evidently--but

my father was a very common sense and not very interesting man.     He was

much interested in farming and spent much of his time on his farm and had

no intellectual interests of any kind.


No education at all?


     Of course, all the Hungarian people belonging to the good society had

to go to the university, but that was a thing that could be done easily for

somebody who had a good social standing.    It didn't involve very much learn­

ing, so my father--! expect he probably was a doctor of law, or something.

That was the most they did--get a doctor 1 s degree in law.   But he had no

intellectual interests whatsoever--my father.    The situation was quite dif­

ferent with my mother ....


Before we get to your mother's family, was your father good at farming?


     Yes, he was quite good at farming.    He was not a modern farmer, but

a good experienced farmer, and he was very much interested and spent much

time thinking about the sheep, the hogs, the manure, and all that, what

should be planted and where, and so he was a good farmer.


You used the word "common sense."


     Yes--let me see.   He was interested in everyday things, not in ab­

stractions, nothing abstruse.

     The situation was quite different with my mother's family, and I am
                                                                      6




sorry to say that the marriage was not very happy because it was so unequal.

My father remained always a stranger in the family because the family was

dominated by my mother and her mother who lived with us and my uncle--that 1 s

my mother's brother and the son of my grandmother.     They formed a triad

that dominated the whole family with very strong intellectual interests in

music and art and anything that is cultural, and my father was more or less

a stranger in that group.   That was a very unequal marriage which just was

possible because my father spent much time on the farm.      The family in the

winter spent the time always in the capital, in Budapest.     During the win­

ter we lived in Budapest where we went to school, and my father very often

went to the farm to look after his affairs.


When you say "lived"--what 1 s the circumstance of living?    What was the

house like?


     Well, on the farm it was a big country house with ten or twelve big

rooms, very nice, with a big garden of several acres with a fence all around

it where nobody could come in and two big watch dogs watching so that no­

body should enter.   That was in the summer.   They called it a palace, but

it was not a palace--it was just a big, nice, country mansion.

     In Budapest, in the capital, we just lived in an apartment.      That was

the usual way--to live in an apartment of four, or five, or six rooms, and

we went to school.   That was my family composition.

     I went to school there, first an open public school.      That was the

usual thing that one did--a public gymnasium, and then later I went to

the university.

     Well, on mother's side--to go back in history.     My memories of my
                                                                     7




mother's side begin with my great grandfather who came down from the north­

ern part of Hungary.    That was partly Slavonic, partly Germanic, a Germanic,

Slavonic, Hungarian mixture in the North, and he called himself Lenhossek,

but the real name was "Linoseg" which was more of a Slavonic sound.       He was

a very poor boy and came down barefoot from the north of the country to

Pozsony which is now Bratislava.    Pozsony was then an important town.     It

was a crowning town where they crowned Hungarian Kings always, and it was

the first big town after Vienna.    Then there was practically nothing.     Buda

and Pest were very little things.     Pozsony was a main town, and my great

grandfather came down there as a barefooted, very poor boy, and he found

employment with an apothecary where he mixed pills, or whatever, but he

finished--he must have been excessively intelligent because he finished

as Professor in the University of Vienna of Physiology and Anatomy.       The

University of Vienna was then the leading university in the world in medi­

cine, and he became professor there.     In between he was for a while Sur­

geon General which was a very high position then, so he must have been a

very outstanding person.    Some years ago, still in Hungary, I found a

book written by him on the development of psychological ideas, quite a big,

nice book, so he wrote big books, and he must have been an excessively in­

telligent fellow.

        Now, his son became Professor of Anatomy at the University of Budapest-­

my grandfather.     He was not very outstanding in any way.   That was in the

early days when anatomy was only half--well, it was a very primitive sci­

ence.     He did many excavations to find old skulls and whatnot--excavations

of the Huns and all that.     He left no--well, he was the first man to have

a microscope in Budapest, but he left no trace in science.      He was not very
                                                                        B




outstanding.     He wrote many papers chiefly in Latin, but he was not very

outstanding.

     His son, who was my uncle, was a very ingenious man, and he became a

histologist too, and an anatomist--well, anatomy was not then a subject

for research, so he became a histologist.     Typical for the Hungarian rela­

tions--he was quite a young man and he was so outstanding that he was pro­

posed by the Faculty as a professor, as a successor of my grandfather, but

then the sweetheart of the Secretary of Education, which we call the Minis­

ter of Education, the sweetheart's brother, or somebody else wanted to be

professor, so the Minister appointed him.     This was good for my uncle be­

cause then he spent ten years in Germany and Switzerland and had become a

very famous man.     He is one of the leading histologists.

     He came back to Hungary after ten years absence, and he had a very

great influence in my family.     He was a splendid musician.     He played the

cello, and my mother sang and played the piano.     My mother was very artis­

tic, and between brackets I can say, in a way, that I owe my life to Gustav

Mahler, the great composer, because my mother, when my father sued her,

didn't really want to accept my father as her husband.        She wanted to be­

come a singer and not marry at all, and the family decided that she should

have a hearing with Mahler who was then the director of opera in Budapest-­

the great composer, Mahler.     She had a hearing with Mahler and Mahler said,

"Go and marry."

     You see, I owe it to him that I am here which was not because of lack

of musicality.     My mother was a tiny woman, and she didn't have that enor­

mous, big voice which is needed for an opera singer.     She had no chance in

opera because she was a tiny, little person.     She was very musical and very
                                                                       9




artistic, but she didn't have the big voice which was needed.

     My grandmother was exceedingly intellectual--she was a great musician,

and I owe it to her that I have not learned the piano properly because she

had such an absolute pitch that if I hit a chord on the piano and she was

in the third room away, she called in and told me which note was wrong and

what it should have been in that chord--you know, which is very depressing.

I said that I could never get it, so I gave up piano then altogether owing

to her.

     They did a great deal of music at home, chamber music with my uncle

who was a good cellist and my mother was a good pianist and singer, so the

life was exceedingly intellectual.    At table we talked only intellectual

things.   To talk about politics, or money would have been disgusting.           We

knew exactly what was going on as little children--what was going on in

the Academy of Paris because we talked about it.    My uncle brought the news,

what was discovered, and so on.   I think that is very important because

our whole career later is decided by our scale of values which we put in

as children--what is important and what is not important.    Money was not

important for us--you see.   If I had been the son of a merchant, I think

I would be a millionaire today, but money--to talk about, and still today

my finances are in awful condition.    I never bothered about finances.          I

will talk about it later--my present finances which are just awful, but I

don't care at all because that's not important.    It doesn't count.       One

doesn't think about that sort of thing.    What counts is spiritual, and es­

pecially creative work--you see, my uncle was a research scientist, and

creativity was the great thing, to create something intellectual, and that

scale of values remains for all your life.    That really decided that I be-
                                                                       10




come a scientist because that is the most creative life, the scientific

life.


You indicated that your mother was artistic.


        Yes.


Did she have training too?


        No, she had learned music.   She learned singing.   She was a well

trained singer, but she had no scientific training.

        My grandmother was very intellectual--she learned languages.     I remem­

ber her when she was already over seventy still learning French to perfect

her French.     That was her great ambition, and we often had fun with her.

She had always a dictionary in her pocket to look up a word, and we chil­

dren also had a dictionary which was very complete, so we would look up

some dirty word in French, a real dirty one, and ask my grandmother, "What

does this word mean?"

        She didn't know, and "1 1 11 look it up in my dictionary."

        A few minutes later she became very red in her face and said, "I

just can't find it."


What a dear soul.


        That shows how very intellectual she was--she was a very good musician.


Was this a family of books?     Did they collect books and read books?


        No, we didn't collect books, but we had only intellectual interests,

and I think no other interests practically, and I think that decided what
                                                                          11




I should become.        My uncle spent the summer usually with us on the landed

property we had, and one of the early impressions which also decided my be­

coming a scientist is this.        He brought with him always an enormously big

book which he read all day long.        It had funny pictures, and as I recall

it now, it must have been a book of Ramon y Cajal who established the struc­

ture of the brain.        I very much wondered about that book.   Of course, I

didn't understand a word, but I had a craving to know what was in that book,

so I think that contributed a great deal to my becoming a scientist too.

        So--go ahead.


Were the children--you and your brothers--listeners, or contributors in

this?


        We were three children who were all very different.       My elder brother

was two and a half years older than myself--he was much, much cleverer than

myself.     He seems to have inherited everything from my mother--all the in­

tellectual things.        For instance, he could pick up a language like that-­

just like nothing, without working.        I remember that Schiller, the great

German poet, had an enormous poem, the Glocke, the Bell, a beautiful poem

which is perhaps ten pages.        I don't know, but it's an enormously long

poem, and my brother as a little boy knew it.        He didn't know German,

but he knew the whole poem.        He was very musical--absolute pitch, but he

had no common sense.       He was too much carried right and left by all sorts

of interests.     First, as a young man, he was kicked out of all schools be­

cause he was a good for nothing.        He was a playboy.   Then he finished the

university and spent much time in the best society, a big society playboy,

and played cards, lost enormous sums, and my poor mother had to stick up
                                                                     12




for him always, borrowing money here and there from money lenders to get

him out of trouble.

     Then when the Hungarian Revolution came, after having been a playboy

in the best society, he became a great socialist, and he founded a social­

ist newspaper.     Now, to his bad luck, he started all this just at the place

where the Catholic clergy had its seat, the highest top of the clergy, so

the clergy had become very angry with him and so--you see, after the First

World War, there was a revolution, and then there came a short while of

communism.     My brother was anti-communist--he was socialist, but in the

eyes of the clergy he was communist, of course, and so when communism was

over, then the whole clergy came down on him.     At first I knew the commun­

ists wanted to kill him, and then the clergy wanted to kill him.     He told

me that the communists came to kill him, and he had to jump out a second

story window.     He hid all night in a railway cart, but then when that was

over, he was arrested by the reactionary group.     This was led by the clergy,

and he sat several months in jail and was released because they found that

he had done nothing wrong.

     Then later he became a musician.     He became a very good musician, and

he gave big concerts.     To start that late and get that far shows at least

some gift, but he had--well, fantastic ideas.     After those troubled days,

the First World War, he became a dealer in foods and spent all his money

on a big truck.     The truck landed soon in a ditch, and his food rotted away,

so everything went wrong that he did.     He really lost all of the family for­

tune we had.     My father died just during the war, and so we trusted my

brother to handle the whole family property.     Just before communism came,

he sold everything.     He said, "Communism is coming, and they will take it
                                                                        13




all away, so 1 1 11 sell it, and we 1 11 have the money."

       He sold it all, but then came the inflation, and the money went away.

Then communism went away, and everybody got back what he had had, but my

brother had sold everything and had just only paper instead--so everything

was gone.     That was, in a way, good for me because I can remember that as

a young boy I had that blas~ feeling.       I said, "What the hell shall I do

in life?     Shall I go abroad and study?   What the hell for?    Shall I study?

Whst the hell!"

       As soon as everything was lost--well, I had married, I had a child,

and I had to fight for it.     Everything became very interesting, and sudden­

ly I got really interested in life, so my own development--! think I must

have developed very late intellectually.      When I was still fifteen, I had

never read a book yet, and the family thought I was an idiot, really.          My

uncle, who was a very ingenious man--he really despised me as an idiot.

The whole family regarded me as an idiot, and my mother who liked only in­

tellectual things, didn't like me very specially.       She liked my brother

who was really ingenious, what we call ingenious--easy learning, but when

I was about sixteen, suddenly something changed in my brain.         I got thirsty

for knowledge, and a few weeks later I read at the time twenty books simul­

taneously.     I read an enormous amount and finished high school, which lasts

a bit longer than in this country, as a highest scholar.         That came in the

last two years for me--suddenly a change somehow.       I don't know what it

was.    Some internal secretion must have started going.


How did you feel about your Dad being a stranger in his own family?


       Well, my father was a stranger to me too.     I didn't like him specially.
                                                                      14




We didn't understand each other.     He was very materialistic--! mean, eat­

ing was very important for him, so every morning he called a family council

to decide what would be cooked that day for dinner, what the menu would be,

and I was never interested and I said, "It doesn't matter to me."

     He always became very angry and said, "You eat don't matter, and we

eat the rest."

     We had nothing in common with my father.     He was just there and paid

the bills, and all that.


What's the source, so far as you can speculate, of the blase attitude-­

"What the hell!"?


     Yes--if one is young.     I had the same trouble that American youth

has--you see.     They have everything here.   I can see here that people are

very wealthy, so these poor, little boys have to break into houses to find

the drink, get drunk and destroy the whole house just to have some kick out

of life--the poor little millionaires!     You see, I was such a poor little

millionaire.     I wasn't a millionaire, but I was such a little boy who just

didn't get a kick out of life because he had everything--the same trouble

as American youth has here.     They have to play hot rod and ruin father's

car, or kill themselves, or break into houses, destroy houses just to get

some kick--poor things!--just to get some kick out of life.      We have much

trouble here.     They break into houses and destroy the property--all well­

to-do families.     They came into my house and stole my money, for instance.

I don't know what for, but they did.     That was my trouble too.   Naturally,

if somebody has everything, then life has no attraction.      There's nothing

to fight for.
                                                                       15




What's the switch in interest--action is a function of interest.       When do

you develop interest?    Out of what does it come?     Is it your uncle?


      That comes slowly--that action.      You see, I decided when I was seven­

teen to go into medicine, and my uncle--he vetoed and protested terribly

and said, "Such a half idiot shouldn't come into medicine!"

      I didn't care much what he said, but then when I had finished my high

school as the highest scholar, then he improved his opinion and consented

to my becoming a dentist.    Then later I started the university and started

working in his laboratory.     I did develop some new method which interested

him so he consented to my becoming--no, I am sorry.       His first concession

was that he consented to my becoming a cosmetist, and after his impression

improved, he consented to my becoming a dentist, and then when he improved

still further in his opinion later, he consented to my becoming a proctolo­

gist--a proctologist is a specialist of the anal opening--because he had

hemorrhoids, and he was interested in that part.       That didn't influence

me.   I just started working, and it comes slowly.      One doesn't know what

science is.    One just feels attracted and starts working, becomes more and

more active and more and more interested.       As a second year student I

wrote three or four scientific papers and earned quite a reputation as an

anatomist.    I can show you the papers.     I will show you all the papers.


Was there anyone at the school in Budapest that helped kick open a few

windows?


      There was one teacher in high school who had much influence on me,

who was very intellectual and woke up intellectual interests.       He was an

atheist.     I was very religious as a young boy, and that's one of the sad
                                                                          16




things.     If one is honest, one believes other people.     The more honest you

are, the more you believe because you think everybody is honest.           If an

elder says that there is a God who created everything in seven days, you

take it--you accept it.        Here his holy ghost made Mary pregnant, he got a

son, and he was angry because that silly Adam ate that apple, all that non­

sense--that schizophrenic nonsense, what we call religion.        It's just as

schizophrenic as what Shakespeare calls the "dream of an idiot".          The whole

religion in my idea, the whole dogmatic religion is this; that he created

two people--Adam and Eve.        They had only two sons--Abel and Cain, and Cain

killed Abel, and then he went away and married.        Whom he married nobody

knows because there was nobody else alive then, but he married, and--you

see, we all come from a murderer, from a fratricide who murdered his broth­

er.     Anyway, but God was so angry with Eve about this apple eating business

that he couldn't speak to man.        Everybody was just damned until he produced

a son.    Since only old, Hellenic Gods could make love to girls--a Christian

God cannot, so he sent his holy ghost which made Mary pregnant, and then

they got a son, and then they hung the son, or crucified him, which is

about the same, so God said, "They are splendid people.        They have hung

my son.     I forgive them."

        It's just the dream of an idiot, but I swallowed it all because I be­

lieved that nobody would tell me lies as I didn't tell lies.           It was quite

a struggle later to shake that all off.        That came--naturally.     It had to

come.

        I got more and more into science.     At first, I worked in my uncle's

laboratory for three years, and, as I say, I had quite a reputation as a

histologist.     My name was already quite known.     I can show you.     They're
                                                                     17




quite nice papers, but then I got dissatisfied.     I thought that I wanted

to know function, and I went into physiology.     I worked a year in physiol­

ogy, but unfortunately the professor was an old-fashioned fellow, and he

was so satisfied with me that he said, "I will give you now a problem of

your own.    You must study the anatomy of the rudiment in the tongue of

the dog."

     This is what I wanted to avoid, so I left physiology, and I went into

pharmacology, thinking that pharmacology was simpler because a drug is sim­

ple, but then I found it hopelessly complex too, and I went into bacteri­

ology.   Then the war came, and then after the war, I went into chemistry

always in a smaller and smaller dimension, electrons, quantum mechanics,

and whatnot.


How was the whole notion of your becoming a doctor to your mother?


     What?


How did your mother regard your becoming a doctor?


     She didn't care much about me.    She was not interested much in me.

That was something everybody did, become a doctor at the university.       That

was a social thing and was not especially exciting for her.     She was ex­

cited only about my brother who was a musician, and I was not a musician.

My brother was easy learning.    I think I just stand between my father's

line and my mother's line.    I got the intellectual interests from my moth­

er, but also some common sense, how to stand in life, and this I got from

my father's side.    That I survived until now with all the mistakes I made

is a sign that I did no nonsense as my brother did all the time.     He got
                                                                      18




nowhere and is now a miserable, old, poor violinist in Berlin, and I am

a respected scientist, so I got somewhere.     I had a constructive career.


Was it possible for you to talk about being a doctor with your father?


     No, he was not interested.    I told him I will be, and he had no ob­

jection to it.


It was available, and you were expected to go to the university.


     Yes, it was expected, so he didn't care very much.     ! 1 11 show you all

these earlier papers.    I still have them.


What was the University of Budapest?


     The University of Budapest was a very high--Hungary is a very funny

country.   We had a fine university which was on a level with any European

university.   Hungary is a funny, funny country, and I 1 m often asked, "How

is it that this handful of Hungarians who came out in the revolution have,

to a great extent, the leading jobs?"

     Leading musicians are Hungarian in this country and leading painters.

They have--! don't say all the leading painters, but many of them have be­

come leading figures, and these are a handful of people who came out in

the revolution.   How is it that Hungarian people are so gifted?     I couldn't

answer the question.     In part, certainly, one answer is that it is a very

mixed race, all sorts of influences, a very mixed race, some Jewish influ­

ence, Slavonic and German influence, and mixture makes always more varia­

tion than a pure race.

     The other thing is that at home there were many gifted people, but
                                                                      19




competition is so very great that nobody could get anywhere, and there was

so much social influence.     You made a much better career if you knew some

Baron, or some Count instead of working.     If you could get in the good so­

ciety, you could make a career.     If you worked and created, you remained

a poor devil.     In Hungary competition was very great.   Now these people

came out here and suddenly relieved of this competition, they just expand

and enjoy this possibility of expanding.     That's partly, I think, the ex­

planation.

     All these gifted people were at home, but I don't think back to Hun­

gary as very gifted--at Budapest we had a very good university, very good

music, but the competition was so great, and everybody had to be very out­

standing to be somebody at all in the intellectual sphere, or be somebody

in the aristocratic sphere.     Again he might have been quite stupid, orig­

norant, but he was an aristocrat which is something else.      My mother's

theory was that Hungary had this intellectual outburst, this bursting out

intellectually.     For a man who was not a nobleman, intellectual creativity

was the only way to get somewhere because he couldn't get on the social

scale if he wasn't a Baron, or a nobleman, but being an outstanding painter

he became somebody.

     It's a very difficult question why Hungarians have become outstanding.


At the university did you take much philosophy?


     No, it was a medical school.


It was a medical school.


     Yes, the teaching is different.     High school lasts a bit longer until
                                                                      20




you are eighteen, and there you are taught everything--very badly, of

course, but there you are taught everything except things which are useful-­

history, Latin, Greek, some very primitive mathematics, and physics in a

very stupid way, but then you go to a medical school.     The university con­

sists of certain schools.     You would call it a medical school.   We would

call it a medical faculty, or if you go into philosophy, then you learn

history or literature.    Again that is a school that prepares you to be a

teacher.   That was the only way to become a teacher, or you go to art school.

Mine was a medical school.


What's the wellspring for a developing skepticism that you have?


     Skepticism?


How does this begin?


     What--religious skepticism?


Any skepticism--the willingness to test and reexamine something which is

handed to you.


     That's not skepticism.     I don't think that's skepticism.    I'm a skep­

tic in another way.     In a human way I'm very skeptical because one of the

great experiences of my life is that as you go higher and higher on the

administrative level, you find less and less wisdom instead of more and

more--you see.     As a boy in the elementary school I thought that the teach­

er must be an excessively wise and outstanding man.     Then when I became

older I saw that the teacher was a stupid fellow, but then I thought the

teacher in the gymnasium, in High School, must be something high.       Then
                                                                      21




later I saw that he was nothing, and so it went on.      In the end, I thought

that the Governor of Hungary, who was in place of the King must be somebody

outstanding morally, and later I got to know him very well, and he was very

stupid, and so I got very skeptic in human things.

       I think now that this Johnson is a very low grade fellow who has no

wisdom at all.   He has all the trickery of politics, but he has no wisdom

whatsoever, and is dishonest on top of that.      I think that things are much

simpler and do not need much wisdom and that a handful of goodwill and hon­

esty is worth more than a pailful of political trickery.      It leads you much

further.   These people who know only trickery--they ruin everything.      I'm

skeptical because I've seen as you go higher and higher in your level,

in your administrative and social level, you see less and less wisdom.        The

greatest wisdom I would see in the Hungarian peasant perhaps who has a nat­

ural outlook and some common sense.

       I am very skeptical about human affairs.    I completely agree with the

Latin saying that parva sapientia regitum mundi which means the world is

governed by very poor wisdom.    All these people up there--the higher they

are the more stupid they may be.    They may know tricks and I don't know

what, but they have no wisdom, so I am skeptical of human ways.

       In science, it's not skepticism which leads me, but just a craving to

know, to solve puzzles, or whatever it is.     If I see a problem, how is it

to get the answer?    How does nature work?   It's just a curiosity, but it 1 s

a very funny way of curiosity for things which nobody has seen before--you

see.    I could compare it to world travelers like Livingston.    If he had

gone to Paris--he could have done it easily, and he could have seen much

more new things than in the middle of Africa, but he was only interested
                                                                     22




in the little white spot in the middle of Africa, and he spent his whole

life exploring that white spot--you see, so that's a different mentality

which is curious not about knowledge because if I would go to the library,

in a day's time I could learn much more than I can in a year's time in my

laboratory because I'm very ignorant, but I'm interested only in things

that nobody has known yet and hasn't seen yet.     That's a funny, queer sort

of mind which you may call pathological, whatever--it doesn't matter what

you call it.


I'm interested in its source.    What did you get from the medical faculty

in the way of illumination?


     Nothing at all.     It was to me a stupid occupation, a sea of hurdles

that I had to jump over.


That's all.


     Nothing else--yes, and if there hadn't been war, I could never have

achieved my medical doctor's degree because I was simply not interested,

and I cannot do something in which I'm not interested.     I am unable to do

something in which I am uninterested.     I was absolutely uninterested, but

in the war--and I got my medical degree in the war--the army needed doctors,

and everything was disorganized completely so I got through somehow, but

if there hadn't been war, I doubt whether I could have made all those exams

really.   I made them.    Later the Ph.D. they gave me--that was only research.

That was simple.   I got out nothing from the medical school really.

     Of course I had to study some internal medicine, and I think it's a

healthy thing that I know about disease because disease contributes a great
                                                                     23




deal to the interest in the mechanism because after all, a disease is a

mechanism that has gone wrong.     Then it didn't make much impression, but

after having studied medicine, it's very useful to have studied it because

I know about disease, and that makes the problem still more interesting,

that it is connected with human suffering and disease.     It makes it more

important--anyway, it 1 s a very useful thing to know medicine.

        I know some of the theoretical medicine, but, for instance, I could

never have passed a surgical exam because I was not interested.     I passed

in a very funny way.     In that great disorganization--if one paid to the

servant, the attendant of the surgical clinic, fifty pengos, which is about

ten dollars, then he would tell you what patients would come to the exam

that day.    The assistant told which patients should come to the examina­

tion.    Questions were asked only about the patients, and I was the last

but one that day, and on that day there were only two patients left, one

with hernia and the other with breast cancer, a woman, and I gave signs--

I was sitting in the hall where the exams were taken, and I gave signs to

the attendant, and he gave me signs that it was a hernia and a breast can­

cer.     I quickly looked in the book for hernia, and I found fifty pages,

and I had no chance to read it.     Breast cancer--there was only ten pages,

and there was time enough to read it, so I told him, "Give me breast can-

cer."

        The next patient when I came was a breast cancer, and I made a splen­

did exam, really a first, but that was all due to the war, and to me that

was a great relief because I could never have studied surgery.     It 1 s such

a stupid subject, has no intellectual meaning, or connections, so I just

somehow got through the exams owing to the war.
                                                                         24




There was nothing in the atmosphere, or in the environment of the medical

faculty that •...


      No.   That was a school, but there was nothing that really stimulated

me.   I learned a great deal which was later useful to me--bacteriology I

learned.


That's only a retrospective thought though.


      It was only to put in a certain knowledge.     It was only learning-­

book learning.      It was very useful, but it was not a very intriguing at­

mosphere at all.     That was old, imperial Hungary, of course.

      Now when the war was over, then I went to Pozsony, to Bratislava, at

the University.


How did that come about?


      That came about--you see, I told you before that after physiology I

went to work at the pharmacological laboratory, and the Professor of Phar­

macology, Professor Mansfeld--he became professor after the war at the new­

ly founded University at Bratislava, so he invited me to become his assis­

tant there.    I went there as his assistant, and Carl Cori, who is a Nobel

Prize winning American came there to work too.      I spent there nine months.

That was a very exciting time because just about then was the Versailles

Treaty, and the treaty gave the whole area to Czechoslovakia which means

that we had to clear out.      There were a few exciting things there.        I

worked very hard there and produced a quite amusing paper in pharmacology,

but there were exciting things.

      There was war between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and even while we
                                                                        25




were there it was already Czechoslovakian territory.     For instance, I

wanted to visit my mother who was still in Hungary, and that was very dan­

gerous and very difficult because being war, one couldn't go over the bor­

der at all.     There was only one way to get over the border.   There's the

big Danube which is a fairly big river, and we Hungarians had a spy service

to tell us where there were no Czech soldiers because as soon as they saw

you there, they would shoot you, so we had news that at a certain point on

the border there were no soldiers and there was a boat available.        We went

at night.     I remember that we were twelve people for a small boat.        It was

quite dangerous because the gunwale was only a few inches above the top of

the water.     It was very exciting and quite romantic because a Catholic Nun

came with us, a very beautiful Nun, Angelica, who wanted to visit her Moth­

er Superior in Hungary, and she was so frightened that she hung onto me.

We went arm in arm all night.     She was just frightened.   In Hungary the

Nuns are very separated, and to be arm in arm with a man was something

quite unusual, but she just clung to me--she was so frightened.      I didn't

abuse her confidence, and when I returned--which makes it romantic--to

Pozsony, to my place, I returned with a very bad pneumonia which almost

killed me, and it was Sister Angelica who was the nurse who saved my life,

really, as a reward for my being generous to her.     I was in such bad shape

that the professor gave me up actually, but Sister Angelica gave me injec­

tions day and night and pulled me through.     That was one thing.

     The other exciting thing was that scientific equipment was very dif­

ficult to come by.     We knew that the university had to be taken over com­

pletely.     We were all kicked out--professor and all--and we decided to save

the instruments, but that was very dangerous because if the Czechs noticed,
                                                                         26




they put you in jail immediately.     We packed it all up and put the instru­

ments in enormous cases.     We dressed up as workmen, service men, and we

somehow got these enormous cases on a boat in the Danube and ferried them

down to Budapest--all that equipment.     On the staircase, one of the cases

got loose and came down with enormous noise, so that I thought we were

lost, but nobody noticed it.


How did you come to the attention of Professor Mansfeld?


     He was professor, and I asked him to accept me, to allow me to work

in his laboratory.


Was he an intriguing person?


     Yes, he was very well educated scientifically.      He was full of ideas.

Most of them were wrong, but there were ideas all the same.      He had in a

way a good influence on me, being excited about ideas, but he had very poor

criticism which was a bad influence for me because I like fantasies.          I 1m

carried away much too easily by fantasies, so it was not a good influence.

I believed too much in my fantasies as he believed in his fantasies which

is bad--in a way good, in a way bad.      In a way, it's very bad too.

     Now after all this collapse in Bratislava, in Pozsony, what saved my

life actually for science was that at the very last moment before communism

broke in Hungary, I bought a thousand English pounds--yes, I bought a thou­

sand English pounds which were available.      I gave four hundred to my moth­

er, and with six hundred I went off, and that made it possible for me--six

hundred pounds.     Yes.   I could live on it in a very simple way for two

years in Germany.
                                                                            27




       Meanwhile, just during the war I married a Hungarian girl, and I had

one daughter who is now living in the cottage.        This Hungarian girl was a

very good sporting girl--a very good, outstanding tennis player.            I had a

wife and a child that I had to look after, and my calculation was that I

had to give up science because there was no prospect for a Hungarian in

science.    We fought on the wrong side.    We fought against England, against

France.    I went through the war, so we were looked upon as the scum of man­

kind--all on the wrong side with feudalism.        Of course, they didn't know

that you could do nothing against it.       You were just called up and had to

go--just as our boys here become murderers.        They are not murderers, but

they just have to go, and that's that.       That was also there in Hungary.

One just had to fight--the whole feudalistic idea was that the correct

thing for a gentleman was to die for a King.        That was the best way to

finish.    It's natural to die for the King.


It was a sense of glory?


       It was just a natural thing to do.     Lo □ k--to   refuse, let 1 s say, the

draft was actually impossible--intellectually impossible, even ten years

ago.    About the third year of the war I could see that the whole war was

a swindle of a little clique and that they sacrificed the whole nation

for nothing.    We lost the war, but they still sent us into the battle-­

"Something may happen."

       This was just a little clique.    What is an emperor?       An emperor is a

man with a clique around him--you see, who all fight for their existence.

If feudalism goes, they'll all go.      They have command of the army, so they

kept pushing.    They lost the war, but they still sent us all into death
                                                                     28




and just for nothing.     I could see that clearly the third year of the war.

     I was up in Russia, in Poland with the army, and it was a very diffi­

cult decision--what to do.     I wanted to get out of it, and I felt that duty

towards my country was to keep alive and not to die in the mud there, so

one day I took my gun and shot it through my arm, through my bone right

away which was very dangerous.     It was very difficult to do because it was

all against my own prejudice, my own feudalistic ideas.     Secondly, it was

dangerous to do because if they caught you--and it was very easy to catch

you; if they had looked at it properly, they would have found it--you were

hanged immediately.     I did it, and I was sent to the hospital where I

could study bacteriology.     I developed a new bacteriological technique

with one arm because my one arm was useless.     I made the doctor's degree

with this broken arm.    Then when it healed, I had to go back to the army,

and I was sent down to the Italian front to a bacteriological laboratory,

having worked between in bacteriology, and there I got into trouble again.

You see, I already got in this wrong way--or good, as you call it--to have

my own judgment, my own ideas.     While the whole country was still saying

every gentleman has to die for the King, I said, "No, I won't die."

     It was just that I had become skeptical towards all this human swindle

and wanted to have my own criterion for everything.     There was a big hos­

pital next door to us.


Just a minute.   [Turned the reel over]


     You see, there was this big hospital next to us where there was a

"private docent"--you know what a "private docent" is, a law degree profes­

sor from Vienna who wanted to make a career.     He made very dangerous experi-
                                                                    29




ments on Italian prisoners, and when I told him that it was not right, he

said, "They are only prisoners."

       I was so shocked by that that I denounced him at headquarters, that

he was making dangerous experiments on prisoners.    I was so shocked by this

idea, but he had two stars more than I had, and a man who had three stars-­

and I had only one--is right, so I was punished.    As a punishment I was

sent into the Italian marshes where nobody could survive longer than a

month without getting pernicious anemia.    It was a death sentence--practi­

cally, but then I was already a complete revolutionary against all this

human dirt.

       I just recall that I lived there in a little house, and next door

lived a general.    Generals could be known from a red stripe on the trou­

sers, a wide red stripe--very impressive--and I don't know what was wrong

with this general, but his trousers were always hanging on a line and dry­

ing.    Something must have been wrong with him--his trousers were always

drying, and then I already felt that the general may be a stupid fool,

but the only essential thing about him is a red stripe.    When I passed

along his trousers, I always marched and saluted them.    If he had seen me,

1 1 m sure that he would have--! don't know what--started a court martial

against me, but that just tells me that I was already completely a revo­

lutionary then.

       What saved my life, I think, from death was that my daughter was

born just then, and I got a furlough.    They allowed me to go to see my

own daughter, and while I was at home, the war collapsed, so I never went

back to the Italian front.


Did you see any hope in Michael Karolyi?
                                                                      30




     I really don't know--no, I was never much convinced.      I was not in­

terested then in the political field.     That was communism, and one had to

put up with it.     Karolyi--I heard him talk once, and he didn't make a good

impression on me.    He had this split palate so his voice was very poor.

He was not a very outstanding man.     He meant well, but I was not interest­

ed at all.


From his point of view, it was too little and too late.


     But I was not interested.     After the Pozsony business, I went to Ber­

lin--no, first I went to Prague to learn electrophysiology.      I spent a few

weeks in Prague with Armin van Tschermak in the German university, and then

I went to Berlin to work with Michaelis who was one of the greatest physi­

cal chemists.     I worked with him for several months.   I left my family at

home in Hungary.

     Then my calculation was that I had to decide what to do with myself,

that I would have to give up science because there were no jobs in the

part which lost the war.     We who belonged to the wrong side, we were not

admitted to the right side.     I thought the only way out would be--! still

had a few pounds left.     I could live on that very modestly for one or two

years--excessively modestly--and meanwhile I could study medicine, tropical

medicine.    Since there are always shortages of tropical doctors because

that was very dangerous occupation what with pestilence and all that, I

could go to the tropics as a medical doctor.     I went to Hamburg, to the In­

stitute of Tropical Hygiene, a very famous institute, where I worked for

about a year doing research.     My idea was that I would learn tropical hy­

giene and do research, have a good time in research, so I did a few very
                                                                    31




nice things in research in bacteriology, serology, and physical chemistry.

     My money was beginning to give out, and I was already preparing to go

to the tropics.   I bought my tropical hat and a few instruments that you

need as a doctor there, and what saved my life--it happened that the Dutch

Physiological Society had a meeting in Hamburg.    They just had a meeting

somewhere else, and there was a Professor of Pharmacology from Leiden there

whose first assistant was a Hungarian whom I knew, Professor Fritz Verzari,

and Verzari was about to go back to Hungary as professor, so he recommended

me to the professor, Storm van Leeuwen, to take me as his assistant, so I

went to Holland as an assistant in pharmacology.    I went to Leiden for one

year--for almost a year about, and then I had to give up my post there.

It was a good post, and for me as a poor Hungarian it was wonderful.     I

was well paid in guilders, but I had to give it up because this professor

was very keen on women, and my wife was very beautiful, and he began to

molest my wife, so I had to give up the job.

     Then I went up to Groningen, a small university in the North of Hol­

land with the idea that I will pass a doctor's exam and then go to the

Dutch colonies, so I went up and tried to pass the exam, but I knew so

little about practical medicine that I didn't really know how little I did

know, so I flunked immediately on the first go, so there I was now with

practically no money and no diploma and nothing--! was in very bad shape-­

and with my family, my wife and my daughter.   What saved my life was that

there was an old Professor of Physiology, Hamburger, a very well known man.

He didn't do great things, but he was well known in science, and he wanted

a certain quite difficult operation done in dogs, a certain fistula where

you cut the intestine, then tie the two ends of the intestine to the skin
                                                                     32




so that you can inject things into the intestine and take it out and see

what happened to it.    All the dogs died and nobody could do this operation.

He asked the surgeons there, and they couldn't do it.     All the dogs died,

and he heard that there was a young Hungarian, and so he asked me to try,

and my dogs stayed alive because I knew the trick of how to do it.        He took

me as his assistant, and I stayed there for six years with him at a very

poor salary, but I had a very nice life.

     Holland is a very lovely country.     Somehow or other we always got in­

to the best society--! mean on the social level.     We did not live within

the society which we belonged to through my low salary, but somehow I was

accepted in the best society there which made life pleasant.     There was

tennis and all that, and though I had no money, I was envied by all because

I had a good life, and these poor millionaires had a very dreary life.        It

was a very funny situation which I must laugh about later because my wife

was very beautiful, and we were visited by her sister who was very beauti­

ful too.    Moving in the best society we had always young people come to see

us by cars and by motors, and we lived in a poor workman's quarter because

that was the only thing we could afford.     The idea got around that we had

a bordello, that it was a whore house.     People were convinced--! didn't

know it then but later, after I had left Holland, I returned once, and

then I heard that there was a revolution already going on around us to kick

us out.    They couldn't suffer us.   We had a very nice old attendant--Boom

was his name, a very good hearted fellow.     I talked to old Boom when I

went back a little bit later, and he said to me, "Oh, it was really too

bad how little salary you had, and it's easy to understand how your wife

became a whore."
                                                                       33




        Of course this didn't bother us at all.   We had a very good life there,

and the Dutch are exceedingly good and nice people.      There in the workman's

quarter we took an apartment, but we had no money for furniture, and within

a few days time the house was furnished--all the people around sent furni­

ture, and we lived happily there for six years.

        Then after six years, I left Holland because I got a Rockefeller Fel­

lowship which was in a very unexpected way.       I was again once more in a

hopeless situation; namely, my old Professor Hamburger--he died, and a new

young professor came who was an animal psychologist and thought that all

the biochemists were washouts and biochemistry was stupid nonsense, that

only psychology was interesting.     He was not only not interested in my

work, but he disliked me occupying a position there.       I wrote a little

paper on a subject, on the respiration of plants, and in Europe one has

to give one 1 s paper to the professor and ask whether it could be published.

I did so, and he said, "Well, it doesn't matter if you publish it or not-­

just throw it away."

        I felt that this situation was impossible, so I resigned my post.       I

had no degree, no money, and no post, and I was about really to finish

life.     I thought it was the end for my life.    It's just exactly as I tell

you, and so I sent my family home to the parents and prepared, so to speak,

for the end, but before the end came I thought that I wanted to have a good

time, so I went to Stockholm, to the International Physiological Congress.

There was an International Physiological Congress, and I went there.          The

chairman was Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, the greatest living biochemist

of his day.     He gave the presidential address, and in his address he men­

tioned my name four or five times, to my great surprise.       It was just an
                                                                     34




accident because Hopkins happened to be interested in that little piece

of work which my professor said, "You can throw it away if you want to."

Hopkins found it interesting and mentioned my name a great deal, so I

picked up all my courage and went up to him after the lecture and said,

"I am Szent-GyBrgyi."

     He said, "Why don't you come to Cambridge?"

     I said, "How shall I?     I have no money to do so."

     He said, "Well, I'll get you a Rockefeller Fellowship."

     Well, he got that, and so I went to Cambridge.

     Before that I had one little experience with England which was a very

nice experience.   While working in Groningen, I found a beautiful, new

colored substance in the adrenal gland which looked very exciting, so I

wrote about it to Sir Henry Dale who was then the Director of the Medical

Research Council of the Research Institute, and he said, "That's very in­

teresting.   Why don't you come over at our expense to work it out here?"

     Well, I went over to work that out, and in a funny way I merited all

the confidence of Sir Henry.     I found that with picric acid, lead picrate,

a double salt--the substance could be precipitated, but lead picrate is

excessively explosive.   I had a big mortar mincing it up, and Sir Henry

happened to drop into my room once.     He said, "What are you doing?"

     I said, "That's lead picrate."

     He said, "For heaven's sake, stop that immediately because that's very

explosive.   That will kill you."

     I said, "I don't mind that because I 1 m interested in this substance."

     He said, "I don't mind you being killed, but I don't want the roof of

my laboratory to be blown off."
                                                                      35




     Then he could see that I was an earnest fellow who didn't work just

for money.    We got on very good terms later, and still he's a great friend

of mine.     He's very old now.   Anyway, then in a very funny way, after a

month's time, the whole thing collapsed.      It turned out that that beautiful

dye which I discovered was nothing else but adrenalin which combined with

the iron of my meat mincer, so that it was not interesting.      This was found

out by a young doctor whom Sir Henry Dale gave me as an associate.         He

worked with me and found this--that it was only adrenalin with iron from

the mincer, so at once everything collapsed.      When it was most hopeful, Sir

Henry already bought all the adrenal glands on the Atlantic Ocean which

came from the Argentine for me for plenty of material, but when it all col­

lapsed, they never reproached me which was very beautiful, because they-­

well, they are English.     They are very fair.   In every other place they

would have said, "Oh, you caused us all this expense for nothing."

     The English had seen my evidence, and so they didn't say that.         They

said, "You stay until you are completely convinced that there is nothing

in it."

     After a month, it was all over, and I went back to Holland and was

there until I left for England again.


There are some things I would like to go back to.      Are you getting kind

of tired?


     We'll have supper soon, so we can go on until then.


I wanted to know where the training and interest in biochemistry--how it

begins and grows?
                                                                          36




        That comes very slowly.    You set out in a new science, and you don't

know what it is.       You just set out at one point and begin to work.        For

instance, in biochemistry--you see, in Leiden when I was in Holland, in

South Holland, the first job, I worked in pharmacology.       This was just

pharmacology, but at nights I began to study chemistry.        Just in my free

time I began to study chemistry.


What's the spur to this?


        I have seen that the explanation must be on the molecular level-­

that's what I thought, so it 1 s no use just working with animals and hearts.

You must work with molecules, and that is chemistry.        I started working in

chemistry, so that when I went up to Groningen, I started operating on

dogs and doing all sorts of physiology and also I began to do chemistry.

        I got interested in a controversy which was then violently raging be­

tween    □.   Warburg, the great German biochemist, and H. Wieland.   Wieland

said that all the oxidation came about by the activation of the foodstuff's

hydrogen, and Warburg said all the oxidation came about by the activation

of oxygen.       Nobody knew what was what.   I got interested in that and found

a very simple way to show that both are right, that active oxygen oxidized

active hydrogen.       I wrote a very nice little paper about it which is com­

pletely forgotten now because it's no more a problem.        Naturally, it's all

right, so slowly you get into it, and that was animal tissues, and I got

interested in--well, I can look up all my old papers, how it slowly got

deeper and deeper into chemistry.

        Then later when I went to England, I went right into a biochemical

laboratory and did only chemistry, so the thing develops slowly, but when
                                                                       37




you start, you really don't know where you are going.     You are just inter­

ested in one thing and follow it up and follow it up and follow it up and

get deeper and deeper into the subject.     I found on the whole that if you

take up a new subject like bacteriology suddenly, the way to do it is not

to take books and learn them, but to start research--anything, get any

silly idea and begin to work at it, and then things begin to be alive and

interesting, and then you read up.     Then comes the books, the reading, the

knowledge, and all that.     Once you have the problem you have your fingers

in the pie--that was always my method.     You see, I never set out, "Now I

will be a bacteriologist."

     I had no idea about bacteriology.     I was just interested in what bugs

do, what immune bodies do under this and that condition.       Then you start

working, and it develops slowly.


What was the impulse that took you to Prague from Hungary?


     Just to learn electrophysiology--you see, my Professor Mansfeld in

Pozsony--he never worked in electrophysiology, and that was a very impor­

tant chapter.   I wanted to know some electrophysiology, how to measure

electric potentials in a cell.     A new instrument was then developed, a

capillary electrometer, which was mercury under pressure in a thin capil­

lary which changed level with the potential.     I learned that.    I knew that

if I wanted to be a physiologist, I must learn that, and from there I went

to Berlin because the pH--the hydrogen-ion concentration became then very

important, and Michaelis was the Pope of the whole problem, so I went

there.   So slowly--it comes.    You don't have great ideas.
                                                           38




Tell me about the laboratory in Prague.   [A bell rang.]


     That means dinner.
                                                                      39




Penzance Point, Tuesday, June 20, 1967.



     Mansfeld I talked about, and I said that he was a bit erratic in his

ideas, but very interested.   With Tschermak I had very little contact, and

he had practically no influence.    I did only go to learn electrophysiology,

the simple methods of electrophysiology, how to use a mercury electrode-­

there was no string galvanometer yet.      The mercury electrode was new, and

Tschermak knew it, and he had a first laboratory assistant who taught me

all that.   I had hardly seen Tschermak.     I have seen so little of him that

somehow he must have had the idea that all Hungarians are called Petofi

who was our greatest lyric poet, and when I took leave from him, he said,

"Good bye, Mr. Petofi."

     He thought I was Mr. Petofi.    I had very little contact with him, but

I had learned in a fortnight, or three weeks, electrophysiology.      Just at

that moment Carl Cori was also there in Prague.      He was later a Nobel

Prize winner from Washington University, and he was a great friend of mine

already from Bratislava, from Pozsony where he worked in our laboratory

for a short while.   We had a good time together in Prague those few weeks.

One of the fun we had--he was Austrian, and I was Hungarian, and we both

smoked heavily, but there was an enormous shortage of tobacco.      The Czechs

felt that since they were allies of the French and the English, they would­

n't sell tobacco to anybody whom they thought was Hungarian, or German.

Cori was of German descent, so we worked out a method which consisted of

we both going into the tobacco shop independently.      Then I began to blubber

in Italian, and of course, the storekeeper thinking that I was an Italian,

an ally of the French, I must have tobacco, but he didn't understand.       He
                                                                         40




asked, "Is there somebody among the customers who talks Italian?"

     Cori said, "I understand Italian."

     He said, "Will you translate?"

     Cori said, "He wants cigarettes."

     Well, we had cigarettes--all we wanted.      That was the method.        That

stay in Prague lasted only a short while.

     Then I went to Berlin, again not to settle there, or begin to become

definitely a pupil of Michaelis, but in those days the hydrogen-ion concen­

tration was something entirely new, and everybody knew it was important.

Michaelis was the great man of that who really almost worked it out single­

handed.     I went there to learn pH.   Michaelis was a wonderful man with an

enormous knowledge in all fields.       He had an enormous memory, enormous

knowledge.    He was a great musician, a great organ player, a great mathe­

matician.    He was just a wonderful, fine fellow, but he was a Jew which

meant that he couldn't make a career in Berlin which was already strongly

anti-Jewish then.     He had a very small laboratory, so small that--well,

it was a very narrow, little room, and he and I--we both liked to walk up

and down, but we could do it only in turns because it was too narrow to

walk up and down together.     I spent there a month or two, or something-­

just in very close touch with him, but no special friendship developed.

I was too young.     I was just nobody then, a young man who wanted to learn

pH, and he was very kind, taught me everything from which I profited, but

I developed no special ties.

     If I learned something from him, it is on the human side--how one can

have an enormous knowledge and stay very modest.       He was excessively modest

and withdrawn, and how one could know more than all the rest and be more
                                                                          41




modest than all the rest--that I have learned from him.

        Then later we got apart, but we kept in touch.     His very last summer

in his life he spent in my cottage down here.        He was living here in Amer­

ica.     First he went to Tokyo and then to the Rockefeller Institute, and

for the summer I invited him, and he spent his whole summer here in my lit­

tle cottage.       Even then no special intimacy developed.    We were just on

good, friendly terms.       He was grateful for my invitation, and I was glad

to have him--he was a wonderful man, but very introvert.         The same year he

died, so that was his very last summer here.        That was Michaelis.

        In Hamburg I spent a year and a half living with my wife and my daugh­

ter very modestly and eating very poorly.         I actually ate such poor food

that I developed hunger edema.       I had hunger edema because I ate mostly

rice.     That was the cheapest thing one could get.      I swelled up from bad

food, but it was a lovely time.       We lived quite happily with my wife and

daughter.     We had a boat.    There is a big lake in the middle of the town,

and there is a river coming in, and so we spent the holidays on the water

with our little canoe.       It was a good time, but all the same I was glad

when I came to Holland.


Are there any observations on the Institute for Tropical Medicine?


        Nothing.    I just used it as a place to work and pick up some tropical

medicine knowledge--bacteria and protozoa, but there was no special intel­

lectual relations between us.       I was glad.    I didn't really want to go to

the tropics.       I just had to do it, but I didn't do it with a full heart-­

just by necessity.


There is some indication that you were able to do some physicochemical
                                                                       42




research.


     Yes, I did.     I did a great deal of research.   I used all the time to

do physicochemical research in serology which is quite amusing.       It lasted

for a year or so, and then I went to Holland.      Holland had very little in­

fluence on me--Storm van Leeuwen, my professor, was not a good sort of sci­

entist.     He practiced medicine and liked those subjects like anaphylaxis

and sensitization which is not very exact, and after he fell in love with

my wife, he began to dislike me.     Of criurse, my wife was quite innocent

and quite passive.     First, we were great friends with the family and often

visited them.

     One thing I learned from Storm van Leeuwen was to talk straight.

You see, yes, or no has a different meaning in different countries.         If

in Hungary you say, "Yes"--that means "perhaps".       If you say, "Perhaps"-­

that means "no".     It's like that old story.   That's convention.   It's like

in Belgium--I found once I asked a certain design from a Belgian engineer

in Cambridge, and he said, "You will have it in a week's time."

     Well, I didn't have it.     Then he said, "I'm sure you will have it in

another week."

     Again I didn't.     Then he said, "I swear you will have it in another

week."

     Again I didn't.     Then in the end he said, "I should drop dead .... "

     Then I got it.     "To drop dead"--means "yes".   All the rest means

nothing.

     In Holland yes means yes, and one of the first Sundays Storm van

Leeuwen invited me to come, and I said, "All right, I will come."

     For some reason I didn't go.     He really resented it.    He said, "You
                                                                     43




lied to me."

      Well, I learned to be very exact in my speech.    I learned Dutch there,

and the Dutch language is very good to express yourself clearly.     In Ger­

man, you can always express yourself in an obscure, fuzzy way, and if it's

not fuzzy, it's not German.     In Dutch it must be yes, or no--very clean

cut like in English.    You can't say, "It looked as if it had been" and so

forth.    In German--you know, you start the sentence with something, and the

verb comes the next page, so that it is all very fuzzy.     I learned that

there in Holland, and that was very useful--that yes means yes, and no

means no, and to be straight and honest.

      Well, anyway, that lasted only a year in Leiden, and then I resigned

my job and went to Groningen, but during that year I learned at night chem­

istry and began to work apart from my official work to do chemical studies

which stood in my favor.     In Groningen when I went up I started right away

chemical studies.     Hamburger, my old professor--he had no influence on me

either.   He was an old fellow who had a great name, but not very justified.

He was one of those people who was everywhere, all Congresses and as chair­

man and whatnot, very well-known, but if you looked at it, it didn't mean

very much.     He had his own theories, but I was on very good terms with R.

Brinkman who was his head assistant.     Later he became professor at Groning­

en.   He lived very modestly, just like all assistants as they were paid

very poorly, but Brinkman was a very first-rate genius.     He had an enor­

mous memory, most enormous memory I ever met.     He read in Groningen-­

that1s a smallish town--everyday in the local newspaper who had a child,

and if you walked with him, and he saw a little child on the street and

asked the child, "What's your name?", he could tell the day that child was
                                                                       44




born.    He not only had this memory, but an enormous imagination and was a

first-rate scientist.     He never achieved much in life because he was much

too good a family father and spent most of his time earning money.          He was

interested in science deeply, but he gave too many lessons in the school.

In the gymnastic school he gave physiologic courses just to earn a little

extra money.     Naturally, if you do that, then you have to neglect research.

That was my only relation in Groningen.

        There I began to do really biochemistry--first very modestly, as I

told you yesterday.     If I go into a new field,   I start research right away

without knowing anything because then things begin to live, if you have

your own ideas and interests.     If you just study books, that is dead knowl-

edge.     That means nothing.   I started right away working on small things.

First, I had this small paper which unified the Warburg and Wieland the-

ories which was a nice paper, but now it has no meaning any more because

it's old history.     I did a few things which had not much meaning, not

much importance otherwise, but there I began to work on the oxidation of

succinic acid and fumeric acid, and for completion of that work later in

Szeged, the same work, I got in part the Nobel Prize.       I got that prize

for two things--Vitamin C and    c4   dicarboxylic acid catalysis--succinic

acid.

        In Groningen I didn't discover anything about this succinic oxidase,

but I had the feeling that it was something very extraordinary, very spe­

cific.     It was not just an enzyme that activates hydrogen, but it had some­

thing more to do because it has very specific features.       It was a deep im­

pression, but I couldn't make any sense of it, and only later in Szeged I

found that it was one of the most fundamental things which was right in
                                                                        45




the middle--well, the foundation of the whole "Krebs cycle" which is so

much talked about.     It should be really Szent-Gyorgyi Krebs cycle, but in

science you can make a real big name only if your name consists of one

syllable--you know, "Krebs cycle", the "Gram's stain", the "Planck con­

stant".   If you are called Polanovsky, or something, it could never be a

Polanovsky cycle--you see.    Szent-Gyorgyi cycle--no, so it has become

Krebs cycle.   I have no objections to that.    That's all right.

     Krebs is a nice fellow, and by the way two or three years ago I had

a surprise with Krebs who is one of the most outstanding biochemists after

Warburg; namely, there was a festival volume in my honor, and Krebs wrote

an article in it.     I wrote a letter to Krebs thanking him for the article.

Then unexpectedly he wrote back a letter saying that he was waiting for

this occasion to write to me for a long time because he owes his life to

me; namely, when the Nazis began to take hold of Germany and began to

prosecute the Jews, I could see that that was a process that starts and

goes on and on.     However at the beginning they all said, "Well, the Jews

can keep their jobs.    We 1 11 just take this and that sort of Jew."

     I could see that that was not going to stop there.      Well, Krebs wrote

to me then, as he later wrote to me in this new correspondence, and I ad­

vised him to come immediately away from Germany and come to England--!

was in England then--and accept any job they offered him.      Not--well, many

of the German Jews made the same mistake.      They had big jobs at home, but

when they got offered a small job in England, they said, "Oh, how can they

offer me such a small job?"

     I wrote to Krebs, "Accept anything they give you" because I knew he

was excellent, and he would make a career, but it was most important to
                                                                           46




put your foot down.     He followed my advice.     His letter said that he had

followed my advice, that he owed his life and his Nobel Prize to that ad­

vice.     He's a professor at Oxford.     I saved his life with this advice

which he followed.     Well, I forgot it completely.     I still have his let­

ter somewhere probably, but I don't know where.

        That was my story in Groningen.     It was not very fascinating.        I was

sort of a second-rate Professor of Pharmacology.        I gave lectures to farm­

ers, and I liked the place very much--nice, honest people, the Dutch, but

after six years I lost my job--! resigned my job, and then Hopkins saved

my life.


These first eight papers on this list--the work that you did there ....


        I can give you all my papers--yes.     I wrote those papers.   That does­

n't mean much--write a paper then.        You see, the German literature took al­

most any rubbish.     Today, now, to have a paper published here in America

means something, but in that day, in Germany, it didn't mean much.              They

were all fairly beginners' papers, but I was a beginner, so all right.

        The oxidation of the potato--that saved my life.     Hopkins quoted

that.     On potato oxidation about which my new professor said, "You can

throw it out, or publish it as you want."        Where is that?   I can't see

that here--that paper on the oxidation of potatoes.        I will bring those

down and show you all that.     I can even perhaps give it to you for conser­

vation, but it's not listed here.


You had gotten into plant respiration.


        You see, right from the beginning my philosophy--well, as to my own
                                                                     47




work--you know, my own work is a mixture of the wildest theories, philo­

sophical things, and little technical things--you see, without a wide

philosophical idea, you in the end get nowhere in science.     You must have

big ideas, but in the laboratory you have to solve little problems.       Some­

times the problem you will work on is a little piece which you hope fits

somewhere into some big idea.   Well, my work is a funny mixture of imagi­

nation, facts, fantasy, and little things you do.    Maybe even your prob­

lems are little, detail problems, but somehow they must resonate with some

big problem.

     Sometimes I ask myself what makes a great research man, or an out­

standing research man?    I don't like to talk about it because it sounds

as if I would think that I am a great research man, but the fact that you

take my life shows that I got somewhere--it means something.     You see, I

know many people who are much better workers than I am--I mean what they

do is much more exact and accurate, and they know much more.     Many know ten

times more than I do.    What makes a real, great research man like Hopkins,

for instance--not that he knew so much, or that he worked so beautifully,

but there was something in him--he just felt which problem smelled inter­

esting.   I couldn't define it better--the problem smells interesting and

resonates with some big problem of nature.    If you follow up that problem-­

you don't know why, but you feel that that's worth following.     Then maybe

it opens up suddenly into a great problem later--you know.     If you look at

the work of an insignificant scientist and a significant one, you can see

no difference.   Maybe the insignificant scientist's work is much better,

much cleaner, much more certain to give a result and improve the matter with

a decimal, or something, and the other may be just--well, it doesn't tell
                                                                      48




you much.     It looks vague and hazy, but in the end it will resonate with

some big problem.    That was true for Hopkins, my dearest teacher, who really

had a great influence on me, though I hardly ever talked to him.

        I never talked to him--it was just his personality which told me.

First, his absolute honesty and enthusiasm really did it because my potato

study interested him.     He didn't know much.   He never had a scientific edu­

cation.     I never had a scientific education myself.   I never had a school­

ing which was a great drawback.     Many things I could have done quite dif­

ferently if I had had a schooling.     I never had a schooling--you know, in

Hungary I had medical school, and then in Cambridge I had a Cambridge Ph.D.,

but it doesn't mean a schooling.     It just means that I did research there,

and my research was successful so they gave me a Ph.D.      I never had a sci­

entific education, and I miss it very much.      My knowledge is very little

but Hopkins never had a scientific education, and he knew very little.

He was just as shy as I am in talking with scientists because he was ashamed

of his ignorance.     I don't dare talk to scientists because I am ashamed.      I

know so little, and they catch me immediately because I know so little,

but, you see, somehow my research, what I did was interesting and in the

end, it turned out to be interesting and important, and I don't know why-­

it's just a feeling--it smells good, and you follow it up.      Hopkins did

the same.

        His first work was the production of lactic acid in muscle contrac­

tion.     That seems a very small problem, and it is a small problem, but it

had enormous influence on the development of science because it was the

first instance of the possibility of a biochemistry.      You see, then, when

he was young, many people said biochemistry is nonsense, because as soon
                                                                         49




as you make chemistry, it is not alive any more.       It 1 s a contradiction in

itself, and Hopkins was the first~-he really opened up biochemistry with

that little study.     Then he studied the influence of milk on the growth

of animals, and he discovered Vitamins.      He is really the discoverer of

Vitamins, and it was just a little study--you know, just a small study,

and if you could see that study as coming from some beginner, it would be

that "I like the other study better.      What is this milk business?"

        Well, it opened up the whole world--you see.    He was a great scien­

tist, and he was excessively modest, very human and very friendly, very

kindly, so kindly that he could never say "No" to any request, so one of

the great jokes in my day was that the communist students made a big de­

claration, a communist manifesto, which was published in the local journal,

and Hopkins was the first signer.      They asked him to sign, and he signed

it, and on the opposite page of the same journal was a big anti-communist

manifesto, and Hopkins was the first to sign it--you know, he just signed

everything.     He was so good that he could never say, "No."

        This goodness--these little, human shortcomings make somebody attrac­

tive.     The outstanding qualities don't make a person attractive, but the

little, human shortcomings, and he had plenty of them.       He was a wonder­

ful man, and he had a deep influence on everybody who was in touch with

him and worked in his laboratory.      He had a big laboratory there.    He

really didn't lead research.     He just picked good people and let them do

what they liked.     He didn't read.   Once a year he gave a lecture which

was very wonderful.     It was just so that you could just sense that feel

of life and all the great problems, though technically it might not have

been so brilliant as some other people could do.       Hopkins had a great
                                                                      50




influence on me.    That was all.

      While I worked in England, I came over to America for a year because

then I isolated ascorbic acid, and the only source where one could isolate

it in bigger quantities was adrenal glands, and they could only be had in

America at 5t. Paul's slaughterhouses, so I went to work in the Mayo Clin­

ic in N. Kendall's laboratory.      Kendall later got the Nobel Prize, and

probably my work--he 1 d seen all these adrenals I worked out--may have in­

duced him to work on the adrenal gland, and that's why he got the Nobel

Prize.   I isolated ascorbic acid in bigger quantities from the adrenal

glands, and then I went back to England and worked there another year or

so.   Then I went back after that to Hungary which may have been a bad mis­

take, or no mistake--! don't know, but anyway •...


This was 1932.


      Yes, 1932--the reason for going back--well, I had first an invitation

to become Professor of Pathology at Szeged University which I refused, and

then I got an invitation again to take over the chair of Medical Chemistry.

The reason to go there was that we had there then a very wonderful Secre­

tary of Education, a Count Klaybersberg, a very wonderful man, a politi­

cian, but he had a wonderful sense for culture and science, and all that,

and he wanted to turn Hungary into a scientifically outstanding country.

Then in Hungary science was very much a matter of social influence.        You

could get a chair not if you were outstanding in science, but if you mar­

ried a professor's daughter, or a Baroness, or somebody, then you could

get a chair.     If you were outstanding in science, that didn't mean much yet-­

you know.   They had a few good people, but most of it really, especially
                                                                     51




the theoretical side, was very poor because of all these social influences

in science.   Now, Count Klaybersberg wanted to reform all that, and he knew

that we couldn't do it from our own internal rejuvenation.     There were two

ways to do it--first, to send our people and to make them learn science

abroad where they have it already and then bring them home and put them in­

to the university chairs.    The other way was to lure back the people who

were Hungarian from abroad who already knew what science was, so he sent

me a special message asking me to come home and help him to reform Hungar­

ian science, to rebuild Hungarian science.

     That was something one couldn't refuse--you know, so I accepted that.

I took this chair in a provincial university--Szeged where he built a new

university actually.    The university, in theory, was the continuation of

the University of Transylvania which was taken by the Roumanians, so the

university there was transported to Szeged, but in fact, it was a new uni­

versity.   Only it took over all professors which was an awful drawback be­

cause most of them were very insignificant--all this social business, so

he wrote me this request to help him rebuild Hungarian science, and that's

why I went home.     Everything went well for one or two years, but then

Count Klaybersberg died.    Suddenly he died, and there I was left up in

the air, so to say, and the new minister was a halfway Nazi, and then

the Nazi wave began to collect momentum.

     I got into more and.more trouble because in Cambridge I had sucked in

democracy--real democracy, and to me a Baron, or a general were just noth­

ing--a nobody.     I just looked for intellectual qualities, and I was thor­

oughly democratic.     Almost the first year after Klaybersberg died, they

began to be unpleasant to me because these Nazis didn't like that I hit
                                                                           52




back.     I almost got in trouble with the students because during the year

you can make little exams--you know, and I took this exam, and the Jewish

boys answered beautifully.         They were really well educated, but the Chris­

tians--there were few Jewish and more Christians, of course, but most Chris­

tians were very ignorant.         This just annoyed me, and I said, "You'd better

learn a little intelligence and interest from the Jews.           You'd better

learn from the Jews. 11

        This was then awful to say, so you see, the next day--especially the

law faculty who were especially nationalistic; you know, they had nothing

to do, and always something all the time--they all came to my lecture with

sticks to beat me up.         I went to my lecture, and I saw all these new faces.

I knew, or felt what it was all about so before they could start throwing

apples and bricks at me, I said, "I see there are many people here who

didn't come for science, so I will give no lecture today."

        I turned around, and before they could do something I went out.           My

colleague, who was a friend of mine, went down to ask them to leave the

building, and they thought it was me and almost beat him up.           I got in

trouble.     That was not very simple to say such a thing then, given the

Nazi wave.

        Then after a while--we had alternating presidents at the university;

we call it    11
                   rector 11 --who is the chairman, chancellor, of the university,

and every year a different professor was chairman.           I was it for one year,

and I got immediately into enormous trouble, because I wanted to give a

good life to the students.         The students had a very poor life, so I built

a bar there where they could have milk, not alcohol, but bar chairs.              Of

course, they at once came down and said that I was making a drinking hall
                                                                     53




of the university--all this Nazi stuff, and there was all sorts of picket­

ing against me.     Then I also got into real trouble--we had a big festivity,

some big anniversary, some real, great stuff, and I was the chairman then.

Even the Governor came down from Budapest.     This was something enormously

big, and I invited everybody except the German consul, and the next day

the German consul came all dressed up to express his country's objection

to my procedure; that I didn't invite the Germans, the great allies of the

Hungarians.     That was a very bad point with the Nazis for me, and I was

astonished that they didn't arrest me then.

     Well, anyway, the Nazis became worse and worse, and I got in deeper

and deeper trouble and got more and more against them--you see, they start­

ed to burn books and kill Jews, take my Jewish friends away, so I got more

against them.     I just cannot keep neutral--! say, "No," and they sent me

word that if I go on, I will live very short.     Soon I was even arrested,

put under house arrest and then in the end, or shortly after, I went to

visit my Jewish friends who were already shut up, locked up, and that was

an awful crime in those days.     I didn't make a secret of my great resent­

ment of Nazism, so I had the whole Gestapo down on my neck.

     I did something very awful then.     I went down to Istanbul under the

pretext of a lecture to get in touch with British diplomacy to see what we

could work out together--you see, the leading Hungarians who were anti­

Nazi--we got together, and they said that I was the only man who could

save the situation, that I should do something about it, so I went to Is­

tanbul and took up touch with the British Secret Service which was very

exciting and like a detective story--you see.     It was not easy.   I just

went down without anything.     All I knew was a Hungarian journalist about
                                                                       54




whom I was told that he was a decent fellow and anti-Nazi.       I looked that

fellow up, and I told him what I was about.      He said, "All right, you come

tomorrow to some club, and there I will introduce you to diplomats."

       At this club I met two people who didn't talk much, and they said,

"Tomorrow at six o 1 clock, at dusk, you must be at this and this street,

and there will be a car standing.    Ask no questions.    The car will have

this number," or be a Buick, or something.       "You will just sit in that car

and ask no questions."

       It was all very exciting because until the last minute you didn't

know whether you were dealing with Nazi secret agents, or the real British

Secret Service.    You just couldn't fi~d out.     It was just a gamble, and

fortunately it was the real British Secret Service.       They took me in the

night somewhere, way out, and I don 1 t know where because I could see noth­

ing.    Then they stopped at a house where I met two people, one of whom in­

troduced himself as the head of the British Secret Service.       I told him

what was up, and he said, "It's wonderful that you've come because we just

had a few days ago a note from the government in London that the only man

who can save the situation is Szent-Gyorgyi."

       You see, I had made no secret of my anti-Nazi attitude, so they

trusted me.    They had been informed that I could save the situation and

that they should get in touch with me, and there I was.       We agreed to some­

thing--a very interesting scheme--that I would go home and establish a se­

cret wireless station myself.     Before I went down to Istanbul, I took a

big risk.     We had a Prime Minister who was shouting very much Nazi against

the Jews, but I had the feeling that he did it only for policy. that he was

really anti-Nazi in his heart, a good Hungarian, so I just took a gamble
                                                                         55




and went up to the Prime Minister and said, "I am going to Istanbul to

get in touch with the Secret Service."

        I expected him to have me arrested immediately, but he did not.       He

said, "Very good.     You go and tell them that I am just waiting my time to

join England, join your side, but I can 1 t at the present under this enor­

mous German pressure, and I am shouting against the Jews because I am hid­

ing seventy thousand Jews in this country and the moment I stop shouting,

the Germans ask,    1 Now,   what about you?   Why don't you do something?'    If

I shout, they are safe, so will you tell that to the British diplomacy?"

        It was really a message, and they said, "My government"--and they

sent immediately a big report to the government in London which answered

back, that the right thing to do was the following:         that I go home and

establish a secret wireless station, and the British government will be

in touch with me.     They could not trust anything the Prime Minister said.

They could not talk to the Prime Minister because he shouted Nazi all the

time and shouted against the Jews.        That they couldn't believe, but if the

Prime Minister has a message and I tell them that it was all right, that

they can trust it, they would take it--you see.         I was to be a connecting

link between the Prime Minister and the English Government waiting for

the chance to bring Hungary over to the right side.         It was a very good

idea.

        I went home to Hungary, and I 1 m still amazed that I could get home,

that the Nazis didn 1 t find me out because Istanbul was a center of spying,

and that they did not find out that it was all a fake--my lecture and all,

but anyway, I went home.        Then somehow it leaked out, so I expected my

final arrest any minute.        It was just a small chance, an accident which
                                                                       56




saved my life.     I was then under house arrest, and I promised never to

leave the town without announcing first to the police.       I was honest, so

I held to my promise.     I didn't know how scandalous the Nazis were.      It

was difficult to imagine.    They wouldn't keep their promise, that they

would leave me in peace.    Then I told them that I was going to Budapest on

the night train, on the sleeper, and just before going to the station, sud­

denly my son-in-law, my daughter's first husband, appeared with a car and

said, "Don't go by train.     I 1 11 take you by car."

     I went up by car and not by train, and the next day I arrived there

and put up the night somewhere.     Then I got a phone which told me that the

Gestapo already waited at the station in Budapest to arrest me and take me

to a concentration camp--probably execute me.       They were disappointed not

to find me on the train, so they went to my father-in-law's house because

they thought that I had slipped out and had gone to my father-in-law's

house.   They arrested my father-in-law instead of me.      They thought it was

me--you see, and the sister of my wife slipped out--she knew where I was-­

and phoned to me what had happened, that I must disappear immediately and

never come to the surface again because they are out to arrest me, and

that just after I left, a patrol came to my home in Szeged to arrest me

there.   It was quite amusing that the head of the patrol was dressed as a

woman.   They thought that I would let a woman into the house and then he

would disarm me.     If just a patrol came then there would be shooting, but

a woman--a rather big man with big hands.      My housekeeper told me that-­

that it was a soldier dressed as a woman and four or five soldiers that

were waiting outside.


Let me put on a new reel.
                                                                     57




     Then they beat up--I had a male and a female housekeeper, and they

beat up my housekeeper and his wife terribly to find out where I was.        They

didn't know.    They said that I had gone to Budapest, so from then on I had

to ~tay underground all the time.    Several times I just slipped out--it

mattered just an inch that I slipped out, and then in the end sometime I

had to hide in the Swedish Legation.    The Swedes were awfully kind to me.

They said that they couldn't put up in the Swedish Legation a Hungarian

subject, so to bridge this the King of Sweden ordered me to be made into

a Swedish citizen.    I became a Swedish citizen with all the papers and

with a Swedish name--! was Mr. Swenson, a Swedish passport, and all that.

They let me stay in the Legation for a while.    Then the Nazis found out

that I was there, but they were very clumsy.    They always gave themselves

away, or made a slip, so we knew that they found out.

     The ambassador took me out and hid me somewhere else.    The next day

they broke into the Legation, destroyed it all searching for me.     I had

the very great honor to have had the personal wrath of Hitler.     He was

terribly angry with me personally, and he shouted my name at the top of

his voice, that he must have me to show the world how such a Schwinehund-­

that1s a pig dog--should be dealt with.    I would have died a very painful

death, and the whole Gestapo to get merit with Hitler was after me to get

me, and it was really a matter of an inch, or so several times that I just

slipped away.    I was fighting all the time and trying to organize things

against Hitler until the very last, and sometimes it was very difficult,

a very hard job.


Were you able to set up the wireless station?
                                                                     58




     No, I couldn't set it up because it leaked out.     I was arrested and

under observation, so I could do nothing anymore, but I had already started

organizing it.   Fortunately I didn't finish it because once they had arrest­

ed me, and had found out my wireless station, they would have shot me imme­

diately, so that all fizzled out.   There was a great deal of all sorts of

dirty business as to what underground life means, and several times I just

missed death by an inch or so.


Was there much support for you on the part of the people?


     What?


Was there much support for you on the part of people generally--Hungarians?


     What was that again?


Was there much support for you during this underground period?


     Well, not very much--you see, I had my own group.     We organized resis­

tance against Hitler, all sorts of resistance.   We organized ourselves, and

they helped me to hide--several people who were very helpful, but there were

many--! had to be very careful because the whole country was infiltrated

with spies.   Every second man was a Nazi spy.   They forced even decent peo­

ple into their secret service by threatening them with death if they didn't,

so every second man was a spy, and I was very well-known in Hungary.      I

grew a big beard and had my hair combed a different way, but all that would­

n't have helped me, if they had gotten me.   It was very difficult for me to

hide, and they were really searching every corner for me--the whole Gestapo

was breathing down my neck, and it was really a small wonder that they
                                                                     59




didn't find me.

      For instance, once after I had to leave the Swedish Legation at the

end, I thought now my last chance for hiding was to a private hospital and

to be put into plaster of paris.   I knew the professor.    He was a decent

fellow who led that private hospital, so I thought that I would use this

plaster of paris so nobody would recognize me.     I went to see this profes­

sor--rather I sent my son-in-law to see this professor, asking whether it

was possible for me to come to his private hospital and be put into plas­

ter of paris, and he said, "No, that is impossible.    The hospital was

searched yesterday by the Gestapo because they expected Szent-Gyorgyi to

be there."

      It was quite difficult, quite a struggle and very dangerous.    If the

Nazis had caught me, I think that it wouldn't have been a very nice end for

me.   How the end would have been--when already Budapest was lost, and the

Germans wanted all the universities to go to Germany and all the professors,

they called a big meeting of the professors.     The Secretary of Education

which was a very high official--he made a wireless broadcast to this group,

this professorial group, saying that "Szent-Gyorgyi is here at my side.        He

went to the Russians, but the Russians burned a big stamp in his forehead,

knocked out all his teeth and tore out his tongue so that he cannot talk to

you, otherwise he would talk to you and tell you how the Russians are, that

you must flee before them."

      I know what would have happened to me.   They would have torn out my

tongue, knocked out my teeth, burned something in my forehead, and put me

in a shop window for people to see--that sort of thing.     I got eventually-­

well, eventually the Russians came, and I had a funny time with the Russians
                                                                        60




too.    They were awfully nice to me, awfully kind.     Molotov personally or­

dered the army to send a group of soldiers to find me, to bring me to safe­

ty.    Well, what moved Molotov I don't know--certainly partly my scientific

reputation.    He thought a scientist shouldn't get killed there in that trou­

ble, but probably they had halfway the idea that I would be a useful tool

in politics for them.     I was strongly anti-Nazi, so I would be a very good

tool in politics.     Well, anyway, whatever happened, he sent a patrol, and

I was hiding someplace, and my wife was hiding in another place, in a cel­

lar, and as soon as her street was cleared of Nazis and we were occupied

by the Russians, then I went to visit my wife.        I hardly arrived there and

found her when this Russian patrol came led by a captain who asked, "Where

is Szent-Gy5rgyi?"

       Somehow he found out that my relations were there.      I thought they

came to arrest me because when the Russians declared war on Finland, I gave

my gold Nobel Medal to Finland--the Nobel Prize went with a big, heavy,

gold medal, and I gave that to Finland as a demonstration against Russia,

so I thought that they had come for me.     "They come too.     I escaped the

Nazis, and now the Russians are down on me."

       They weren't against me.   They were not down on me.     They wanted to

bring me to safety.     They were excessively kind.    My wife had a family of

thirteen people, and my wife said that she didn't want to leave her family,

and I said, "I don't want to leave my wife."

       When they wanted to take me to safety to the south of Hungary, I

said, "I am not going because I don't want to leave my wife."

       Well, although they were very short of transportation, they removed

all the thirteen people down to the south of the country.        They had a whole
                                                                        61




motorcade--three trucks and cars.     They were exceedingly kind.     They took

me then--me and my wife--to the Russian headquarters, to Malinowski, and

there we lived for three months with a special nice house, a servant and

good food.     Then after that, they let me go back to Szeged.     Then they

took me to Moscow--to a big, academic festivities, and I lived there sev­

eral months in Moscow.     They were excessively kind and nice to me, but I

had become more and more a disappointment to them because I was just not

a communist.     I was very pro-Russian in my own country and talked in their

favor just simply with the idea that if we had to live together, for heav­

en's sake, let's understand each other.

     Well, the Hungarians just hated the Russians.      I tried to bridge that

until I found out that the Stalin group of Russians were scoundrels--you

know, that they are just criminals, the Russian high politics, which I

found out.     First in Moscow I found it out.   They made all sorts of abuses.

They behaved terribly--the Russian army.     They were a barbaric band of peo­

ple who behaved in the most disgusting fashion--you know, they violated

children, little girls, and on the street one could see little girls forced

down on the ground and the soldiers lined up to make love to them--so-­

just like animals.     They destroyed and robbed everything.     It was very dis­

gusting, and what especially disgusted me--a Hungarian regiment put down

their arms.     They didn't want to fight for the Nazis.   Then the Russians

arrested all of them and put them in a prison.      As soon as you put a thou­

sand people in a small prison, typhus fever begins to decimate them which

goes in geometric progression.     Really it was an awful thing.

     I went partly to Moscow to talk to Stalin to say--then I thought that

abuse was with local, little generals, and I wanted to tell Stalin--you see,
                                                                     62




I had these funny ideas of human brotherhood, that we will be brothers,

but as long as these local generals do that, we cannot be friends.        I

went to Moscow to talk to Stalin.    I wrote him a letter which is very

funny because if you write to Stalin, you write like "Dear Joseph."           Of

course it 1 s not easy to get to Stalin, and they wanted to find out first

what I have to tell to Stalin.   To find that out they took me first to

Mr. Decanozov who was head of foreign something of Hungary, the whole

Hungarian business in Moscow.    He must have been a very high official,

right on top, because he was executed later with Beria--together, side

by side--and one must be very high up in rank to be executed with Beria.

This Decanozov wanted to know, "What do you want to say to Stalin?''

     I said, "I want to tell him that with all these abuses in Hungary we

can 1 t make friends."

     Then Mr. Decanozov began to shout at the top of his voice, so I could

see immediately that all that abuse was not local.    It was planned from

Moscow to ruin Hungary, so that was my first disappointment which made me

cool to this whole Russian business, but still I believed that we could

make friends somehow.    I stayed for two years, and it was an amusing time

in Budapest--these two years under the Russians, 1947, and what made me

come away.

     When I went back to Hungary, I was very influential with the Russians

and with the Hungarians.    I was anti-Nazi and so on, only Nobel Prize win­

ner, the only one in the country, very influential.    I was a very great na­

tional figure there, sort of a national hero almost, and I thought that my

vocation was to save the--well, two vocations; first to rebuild Hungarian

science, build research and my own research institute and educate young
                                                                     63




people, and second, to save all the leading Hungarian artists and scien­

tists from death and starvation.   To be able to do all that I needed a

great deal of money, and there was a very funny fellow in Hungary who was

a great industrialist, had great influence and lots of money.   He gave me

not only money, but all the material I asked for--food and whatnot--and I

owe it entirely to him that I could build up a big research institute, and

we started research--oh, anything I wanted.

     Then I thought, "I have to save the Hungarian intelligensia"--the

leaders of Hungary--"from starvation."

     To be able to do that, I founded a new Academy of Sciences to which

I simply appointed, in a very autocratic way, the leading intelligensia be­

cause the old Hungarian Academy was no good.   It was all social influences

and not very good, so I appointed the leading painters, sculptors, musi­

cians to be members of my Academy, and the Academy consisted of a grocery

shop where they all could come and take what they wanted without paying

for it.   The other function of the Academy was that every fortnight we

gave a concert with doughnuts and jelly, so they could fill their bellies

and have good music.   Then it was very important, really, in that depres­

sion, dirt, and hopelessness.

     It's a bit cold here.   Let me get my coat and put something over my

shoulders.   Are you cold?




     Let me get my coat.

     I was still very pro-Russian in this sense--not that I liked them es­

pecially, but I felt that we must get to an understanding somehow.        Scien-
                                                                      64




tists are always for understanding, but then eventually what made me come

away was that this friend of mine who gave me enormous amounts of money

and on whose money and help I did all this--my laboratory consisted of my

laboratory which had all the chemicals which we needed and an enormous

kitchen which was led by my wife, my second wife, who cooked for sixty

people because if you wanted somebody to work there, you had to cook for

him because you couldn't find a potato in Hungary then--you see, and we

had all sorts of things.     This friend gave me all sorts of material and

money and with a Hungarian author, a writer, L. Zilahy who is very noted

here, wrote a best seller here several years ago, we made a traveling

agency.     We got from Voroshilov three trucks, or two trucks, and we trans­

ported people to the country for very much money--you see, because every­

body wanted to get away from the capital which was very dangerous with epi­

demics and fire.     They paid any amount.   There was no train, or no cars,

so they paid any amount, and really for exorbitant prices we transported

people into the country, and with the money they paid we bought food right

in the country and brought it back to fill the grocery shop--you know, that

sort of thing.     It was all funny business.   It's difficult to understand

that now.

     Anyway, this friend gave me most of the money.      That was all just

peanuts what we earned with our traveling agency.      He gave enormous sums,

but the Russians--they hated him.     First, he was a capitalist, and in the

second place, he had too much influence with me, and the Russians wanted

to have me in hand, but as a friend of the Russians, I had the Russian con­

fidence.     I could go in and out of the country.   I went to Switzerland one

day to repair my health, a little skiing and mountaineering, but I was
                                                                      65




worried about this man, that the Russians would use my absence to arrest

him and put him away.   Before I left, I agreed with this fellow that he

would make no sudden move without my knowledge.     My idea was that if he

disappears--well, the Russians--they didn't arrest people.     They kidnapped

people and always secretly.     If he disappeared, then I must be sure that

he is in a Russian prison.    If I am sure, I may have a chance to get him

out, but if I have a hesitation, then I will have no chance.      If I ask

the Russians, "Is he in a prison?", they would say, "No"--you see.

     I hardly arrived in Switzerland when I got a message from the family

that this man disappeared, so I sent a wire--a fairly stiff wire--to the

communist dictator asking for the immediate release of this man and guar­

anteeing that he had done nothing against the Russians.      Of course they

just laughed and did nothing.     A week later he was still absent.   The next

day after he disappeared, all the communist newspapers had big articles

saying that he had stolen money and run away, but I knew, of course, that

that was bunk.   A week later when he still didn't come out, I sent a wire

to the Prime Minister to make it now really official, which left no doubt

that if they didn't let this fellow go, then I would make an international

scandal and tell the world what was going on in Hungary.      I really didn't

know what was going on in Hungary because the Russians were very clever.

Nobody came out alive from a prison.      They disappeared and never came out

again.   Nobody knew what was going on.     Nobody had any idea what was going

on, but they knew and they thought I knew, and they were afraid.

     They were afraid of me not that I was such a great man to be afraid

of, but it had been a bad point for the communist dictator in Moscow that

he let me go to Switzerland and do all this fuss--you know, so they let
                                                                      66




this fellow out.     Then it turned out that he was tortured in the most

beastly fashion for a fortnight--the most beastly way--a most refined and

beastly way, and he was half dead when they decided to let him go.         Then

they said, "You have seen too much.     You must go away from here," and they

even gave him a passport, but he couldn't move for a fortnight.      He was

beaten up so badly.     He had to spend a fortnight in bed.   Then he had a

car, and he was driven out.     My wife thought that he would disappear on

the road on the way, so my wife came with him which was very brave because

they might have disappeared both, but my wife hoped that they wouldn't dare

to do that to her.     They came out, and we met in Switzerland, and from this

fellow I learned what was going on behind the prison wall.      Well, I had

seen that they were just criminals like Hitler, and there I was now--what

to do, to go back and be pro-Russian--that was impossible.      I had my tooth

brush and nothing else with me, so I tried to come to America.      I had a

little money myself, so that I could live here for one or two years very

modestly.   That's what I wanted to do, but they wouldn't let me in here.

They said, "You are a damn communist!     You are too friendly to the Rus-

sians!"

     I was denounced by a doctor at the Hungarian Embassy.      He said that

I was a damn communist, that I was very friendly to the Russians, so they

said, "You can't come into this country because you are a damned communist."

     The man who brought me in actually was Max Heidelberger, a very fine

biochemist, a very good character.     He forced the Attorney General to put

in an investigation against me, the idea being to find out whether I really

was a communist, or not, not just a denunciation, so Attorney General Clark

put in a serious investigation under the pressure of my colleagues.         Then
                                                                        67




they found that I was not a communist, and they eventually let me in here.

That's the thing--that I am a traitor to Hungary, to the Nazis, a traitor

to the Russians, a traitor to everybody, and in the end, they wouldn't let

me come into this country because I am a traitor to capitalism.

        This is 20th Century--all this dirt and whatnot, and I am quite inno­

cent.     I don't like politics.   It's not that I am a fellow who likes to be

in all that dirt.     I hate all that dirt, but what to do if you are the only

outstanding man, how to let the other colleagues die from starvation--you

see, and when you see your Jewish friends killed, how are you to stand qui­

etly and say, "It's all right with me.      It's not my business."

        I just can't do it.   I wasn't made that way.   This, I think, I have

probably from my father's side--not my mother's side who were all scien­

tists--but people who could stand on their feet in life, people on my fath­

er's side, people of high administration and all that, so that's how I got

to America and settled here.

        It's worth mentioning why I came to Woods Hole.    It 1 s very funny.

You see, I remembered that here was a laboratory where you could rent a

table, and I didn't want to depend on anybody and ask no favors.        I

thought, "I have enough money to pay for that table and live here quietly

for one or two years very modestly, and that's enough for me."

        But that I remembered Woods Hole and why is funny.    I owe it to the

lobsters that I came here which came about in this way.       In 1927, or so,

there was an International Congress in Boston which I attended, and then

they took us out here on Penzance Point, half a mile from here, at the

end of this peninsula, for a clam bake, and they had wonderful, big lob­

sters.     Living in a continental country lobster was a great excitement,
                                                                      68




and I could never forget that.     If it hadn't been for the lobsters, Woods

Hole would have dropped out of my memory altogether.     The laboratory I

forgot.   They are all the same.   They are not interesting, so it was the

lobsters which brought me to Woods Hole--not that I wanted to eat lobsters,

but they kept Woods Hole alive in my memory, so I came to Woods Hole, and

it was a very happy choice.

     Then began my American struggle which was in many ways worse than the

Nazi struggle which I can perhaps tell about later.     I 1 m still in this

trouble and still in great difficulty in spite of all my past and my work

and achievement.    I am still in the greatest financial trouble.    I can ex­

plain that, but I don't know whether you want it now or--well, it doesn 1 t

matter.   We can do it some other time, but it was very hard, a very tough

fight here in America which was more enervating than the Nazi business be­

cause that Nazi busine 9 s was sort of a kind of sport--you see, that you

may be killed is not exciting.     I took it for granted that I would be

killed.   I was sure that I would be killed.    The rest was just sport and

fun--you know, but this in America was enervating--all sorts of struggle

for fellowships, means of work, and all that.     This country was very gener­

ous to me in one way and excessively mean in another way, but I will tell

about that later.   That's one little story which I will tell you.


What did you do with that marvelous group of people that you'd gotten to­

gether?


     Here?


In Hungary?
                                                                       69




     In Hungary--well, half of them I brought out here.


How were you able to do that?


     That belongs to this American story.     I don't know whether you want

to go on.   It's a bit long now.    We 1 ve gone five quarters of an hour.   It

would be a bit too much to go into that now because that would take about

three quarters of an hour to explain this whole situation which is perhaps

worth it for the record because it's typical for this country and for the

life of a scientist here--at least of my type.


We can defer that until tomorrow.


     Yes.


Do you feel kind of tired?


     We can do that some other time.


[When I turned off the tape recorder, we continued to talk, and the sub­

ject of his work came up, and more particularly, Vitamin C.       I turned the

recorder back on and we continued as follows:]


     This Vitamin C, I should say, was an accident in my work.       I got in­

terested in plant respiration.     As I told you, one has great philosophical

ideas, and my one great philosophical idea, which since then has become a

reality in science, is that there is no difference between life and life.

A grass blade and you--there is not much difference.      It is the same story,

and the basic processes are just the same.     Then it was a very wild, philo­

sophical idea.   Today it is natural--you know, today even the bacteria are
                                                                      70




the same as man.    I mean the whole DNA and RNA story is just exactly the

same, but then it was new.    I was interested in plant oxidation, and I

found a reducing agent in some of the juices--you know, there are two

kinds of plants.    One kind turns brown like banana, and another kind does­

n1t turn brown like the lemon.

     You see, that little paper I wrote which was so important and which

Hopkins quoted was about the browning of the plant.     After I finished the

browning and learned how they do that, I turned to the plants which did not

get brown.   Then I studied the juice, made all sorts of little experiments,

and then I found--there 1 s a little test which is done a million times in a

very primitive course, a test for peroxidase, an enzyme which reacts with

peroxide.    You have benzidine, and that 1 s the thing which is oxidized by

peroxidase and peroxide into blue dye stuff.     If you add benzidine to your

solution of peroxidase and peroxide, then it turns blue like that--immedi-

ately.

     Now one of the characteristics of my work to which I owe much for any

result is that I observe everything, and if there is a slightest discrep­

ancy, I notice it, and I ask why and go into everything, all the details,

so I did this test which is done in primitive biochemistry courses a thou­

sand times a day in all classes, and I noticed that the test with the

juices of these plants containing peroxide, peroxidase, and benzidine had

a little delay of half a second or so.     It didn 1 t turn blue at once, but

held it, and then it turned blue.    There was this little discrepancy, and

I said, "What the hell!    Why is that a half second late?"

     Then I found that there must be a reducing agent, which reduces the

oxidized benzidine, and so I must know what it is.     It is easy to find
                                                                       71




because I have a test for it--you see, it reduced iodine.       It's a very

simple test, and in a few seconds I could see how much is there.       If you

have a good test, then it's not so difficult to isolate.       I isolated this

substance, and I called it hexuronic acid--this is a funny story.       First

I called it--well, I knew immediately that it was a carbohydrate deriva­

tive, and I didn't know what it was, what carbohydrate, so in Latin "don't

know" is "Ignosco", so I called it "Ignose."      Ignosuric acid.   I sent in

my paper to the biochemical journal, and the editor, who was a very serious

man, said no joking.    He reprimanded me, that I joked about science, and

he said that I must call it hexuronic acid.       I called it "Ignose", and

then I asked, "What about Godnose?"

     He didn't like that either, so he said, "You must call it hexuronic

acid" which was the wrong name, but I called it hexuronic acid.       I thought

that may be Vitamin C, but I didn't like Vitamins because it was too glam­

orous stuff.    There was a sensation about it, so I said, "That may be Vita­

min C" but all right, I had it in crystals, so I just put it away.

     Now when I was in Hungary--you see, well, it was easy to find out

whether something was Vitamin C because you autoclave the food.       That de­

stroyed all the Vitamin C in it, and then if you fed the guinea pig on

autoclaved food, they died of scurvy, lack of Vitamin C.       If you wanted to

know whether something contains Vitamin C, you added it to the food, and

if the animals kept alive, then it contained Vitamin C, but nobody knew

what Vitamin C was.    Nobody could isolate it.     Now, one day a young man

came to me, a very nice young man, who said that he was living in America,

was in Hungary for study for a year or several years, and he would like to

work with me.    He was of Hungarian descent.     He talked a little broken
                                                                        72




Hungarian, and I asked him, "What can you do?"

        He said, "I worked with Dr. King in America who worked only on Vita­

min C, and I can tell you whether something contains Vitamin C or not,

whether a substance is Vitamin C, or not."

        This just means that he knows how to autoclave milk and feed guinea

pigs.     I said, "I know.   That's splendid.   Here's some stuff--this hex­

uronic acid.     You 1 11 probably find that is Vitamin C.   Try it."

        Now if you don't feed an animal Vitamin C, first they grow and then

after a month they stop growing, and then their weight goes down and in

another month they die, so to be really sure, you must wait until your con­

trol group dies.     The group which gets the Vitamin C must go on growing,

so it takes two months.      After a month, this Swirbely came to me and said,

"I know now it's Vitamin C. 11

        Then this was enormously important.     Nobody knew what Vitamin C was.

He said, "I know it is Vitamin C, but I need another month to be dead sure,

to finish the experiment, but what is my position towards Dr. King who was

my teacher and my professor who worked all his life to find out what Vita­

min C is, but he could not yet."

        Then I thought--! was convinced that everybody who was in science

must be an honest man.       I was convinced of that, so I said--I remember the

words I said to Swirbely--"If you would be my pupil and go away and find

out what I am looking for and not tell me, I would say that you are a

lousy fellow.     You'd better write to King what you've found."

        He wrote to King and--funnily enough, two letters crossed.      King wrote

to Swirbely saying that he still doesn't know what Vitamin C is, and Swir­

bely wrote to King saying that Vitamin C is hexuronic acid.        A fortnight
                                                                    73




later a note appeared in Science from King, saying that he discovered that

hexuronic acid is Vitamin C and all the logical consequences of that idea

that he recognized.   There was not a single experiment--nothing.   [King,

C. G. & Waugh, W. A. "Chemical Nature of Vitamin C" 75 Science 357-358

(April 1, 1932)]   He needed two months to do those experiments, and his

real paper was sent off only two months later.   [Waugh, W. A. & King, C. G.,

"Isolation and Identification of Vitamin C" 97 Journal of Biological Chem­

istry 325-331 (July, 1932)]   He just published our letter with all the con­

sequences of the discovery.   This was a shock to me, but I didn't mind very

much because I thought, "It 1 s immaterial for science who discovers it.      The

chief thing is that we know what Vitamin C is.   Whether it is King, or me,

it doesn't matter."

     What I resented--well, by and by resonance came to me, or at least

later I have learned that Dr. King went around the country giving big lec­

tures telling because I published by then, after that--telling in all these

lectures that I stole the thing from him, that he had an unfaithful assis­

tant who told the secret to me, that I published it and stole it from him,

that I deprived America of the Nobel Prize by stealing--you see.

     You can check me on that.   You look up Swirbely some time.    I don't

know where he is, but he is easy to find in the Chemical Society list, or

something, and ask him whether all this is true and how true this is--well,

so I got the reputation to be a dirty scourdrel in this country who stole.

This appealed to people that America lost one Nobel Prize, lost a piece of

glory through a dirty trick of a dirty Hungarian and a faithless assistant

who gave away the secret of this great King.

     This King was a very dirty fellow, and Swirbely, when he left me,
                                                                     74




went to Kendall to work with Kendall.     I worked with Kendall, so I knew

him very well.    I wrote to Kendall that "I have the feeling that this King

is talking about me, telling wrong things about me, that I got this from

him, though he has got it from me, so will you please look into this whole

correspondence which Swirbely has, and there you will find the situation,

and if you find that something should be done, will you do it?"

       I had in mind that he will ask the Chemical Society to send out a com­

mittee to study this theft--this scientific theft, and then the truth will

come out.    I wrote this to Kendall, and nothing happened.   A year later I

met Kendall in Zurich, Switzerland, and I said, "Nick, you remember my let­

ter?    I asked you to look into the facts.   Did you do that, and what did

you do about it?"

       He said, "I looked into it, and it was plain that the only thing I

could do was to wring the neck of King, and I didn't feel like doing it."

       This I can understand.   It was so dirty--the whole business--that he

didn't want to get into it.     Now, this King is an utterly dirty fellow, and

how he blackened my name I just found out by accident.     The Academic Press

gave a big dinner here at the International Chemical Congress, and I was

asked to an after dinner speaker.     A pupil of mine was sitting there next

to an American and--you see, in a speech you give away your character, more

or less, and after my speech this American said to this pupil of mine, "I

think, after this speech, that after all this Szent-Gyorgyi is not such a

dirty skunk as I thought he was."

       You see, King really blackened my name.   I was known here as a dirty

crook who just stole something and deprived America, and this dirty King-­

he followed this policy of this--how do you call this Middle Ages fellow
                                                                      75




who wrote the The Prince?    Machiavelli.   Well, Machiavelli tells you that

if you do wrong to a man, you must kill him; otherwise he will shoot back.

He tried to kill me--this King.    Whatever I did, he was after me.    You see,

I discovered--well, what I still think is Vitamin P.     I described it, Vita­

min P, and King who has made a big career here with his wounds which he

showed, that he was betrayed by an assistant and so on, was made chairman

of the Vitamin Committee, or something, and he immediately made this com­

mittee decide that this is not allowed to be called a vitamin at all.        It

will be called something, some funny stuff which had nothing to do with

me.   All right.

      I described an enzyme which oxidizes Vitamin C.    Immediately King

published a paper--there is no such enzyme.     I made a rough mistake.     It's

just copper which I took for an enzyme, and to my good luck Hugo Theorell,

the Nobel Prize winning Swede--he checked me and published that it was an

enzyme, just exactly as I described it.

      King hunted me up everywhere--the dirtiest fellow, and still my pres­

ent trouble I owe to him.    When I came to America, the first grant I ap­

plied for was at the National Health Institute which gave away grants of

twenty-five thousand dollars, and I put in a request for a grant for my

group which was denied.     I asked a member of the committee, who was a

friend of mine, Paul Neal--he died since--"Why did you refuse my grant?"

      He said, "Simply because King"--this fellow--"was the chairman of this

committee, and he took me and every member aside to a corner and said,       'You

must not give money to Szent-Gy5rgyi because he is a thief.'"

      King--he must have known that he stole from me, and not that I stole

from him.   You can check me on that.   Talk with Swirbely.   I would be de-
                                                                              76




lighted if you would look him up.          He is a very honest fellow.   Today it

warms my heart to think how honest Swirbely is because King offered a big

job to Swirbely who wrote me, "I have a family, and King offered me a big

job if I testify that you stole from him, but I can't do it. 11

       You see, King is a real dirty skunk.         This Swirbely didn't get a big

job.       He just had to struggle, and he's a chemist in some company, never

got the job King offered because he just couldn't do it.           It's awfully nice

to have such honest people who will resign a big post for honesty sake, be­

                                      11
cause he could have easily said,           Oh yes, I told Szent-Gy5rgyi what you

told me. 11

       He refused.     You can check me on that with Swirbely.

       My present troubles still come from this.         Not only did I lose the

twenty-five thousand dollars which NIH refused to grant me, which was then

an awful difficulty, but--you see, now I can tell you that when I came to

this country, I settled here with the idea that "I will work quietly in a

corner and depend on nobody."

       Well, the Navy sent down two people, two very outstanding, scientific

people to look into what I was doing.           I told them, and they said, "That's

splendid.       Can the Navy help you?"

       I said, "Of course they can help me.         They can give me money.        I want

to get my group from Hungary, my associates from Hungary."

       They said in the name of the Navy, "All right.         The Navy will give you

a hundred thousand dollars a year, but we cannot give money for transporta­

tion because there is no such fund, but bring out your people somehow.                 We

don't care how, and then we will give you a hundred thousand dollars a

year. 11
                                                                     77




     Now, this Dr. Rath who gave me all that money and whom I got out from

Russian prison--he came out with me to America, and he said to me, "I have

a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.     I don't know what to do with myself,

and I don't know what to do with the money."

     I said, "I know something.    You lend me money, and we will spend it

on bringing out my group, and then we get a hundred thousand dollars and

make an Institute for Muscle Research.     You will be the Secretary and you

can have ten percent, administration costs, overhead, and you will have a

position, standing, and a natural salary.     I have my Institute.   I do the

science, and you do the finances of the Institute."

     That's how the "Institute for Muscle Research" was born, and then this

Dr. Rath became the Secretary of the Muscle Institute which we incorporated,

and he--well, it cost about a hundred thousand dollars to bring out twelve

people.     Then you could bring out somebody only if he was a professor, or

a priest.     Nothing else, so we had to find professorships for all these fel­

low people without their being there--you know, and that costs an enormous

amount of money, to get twelve professorships for people who don't want to

teach at all, but be in Woods Hole.     With all these traveling expenses,

Dr. Rath spent a hundred thousand on bringing out my best people.      Then I

went to the Navy and said, "Now, where's your money?"

     They said, "We can 1 t give you any money."

     Then somebody said that it was McCarthy who objected to giving me

money, but later I heard that it was not McCarthy, but Detlev Bronk who

was head of the Academy.     I know Bronk, and he is a very nice, decent fel­

low, and I heard he vetoed this whole thing and probably because he said,

"A thief shouldn't be given money" because he also heard that I was a thief
                                                                      78




who stole the whole Vitamin C business--you know, so King almost killed

me--you see.

     All my trouble, even today, comes from that fact, that I didn't get

that money the Navy promised because Bronk who was very influential--you

know, he was sort of chairman of all existing committees, and the Academy

said, "No money for Szent-Gy5rgyi" so this King almost killed me and just

because of one sentence which I said in my life which was based on the

idea that everybody who is in science must be a decent fellow--you see.

     In those days it was impossible in America to find money for basic re­

search.     Nobody knew what basic research was.   People just looked blank if

you said, "Basic research."

     They asked, "What's it good for?"

     You say, "It's good for nothing."

     Then they ask, "What are you going to spend your money on?"

     I say, "I don't know because in basic research you don't know what

you are going to do."

     Then they said, "You are a lunatic.     You don't know why you do it,

and you don 1 t know what you do, so why should we spend money on you?"

     The navy was the only agency that supported basic research with money,

but Dr. Bronk cut me out of the Navy business probably as a thief because

of this dirty King.     I spent the whole money of Dr. Rath that he had, so

one Monday he came up to tell me that I must disband my whole group, and

fortunately the same day I got the first check from the Heart Association,

a nice big check of twenty-five thousand dollars which saved me and tided

me over, but all the same I was in the biggest trouble because there was

no money.     I had to go to Washington to earn my own salary.   I worked at
                                                                        79




NIH for two years because I was paid.      They were very generous and took

four of my people.     They took almost half of my group which relieved the

strain here, and Dr. Rath could keep the rest alive from his own money un­

til it was all gone--you see, and my present troubles still come from all

that.

        My present troubles--at seven o'clock we 1 11 have dinner--my present

financial troubles still come from that because Dr. Rath spent all his mon­

ey.     The Institute didn't have any money.   Then later the institute got

better, and he was a great gentleman--you know, in Hungary there's no real

borderline between a gentleman and a gangster, let's say.      How he got all

this--I mean he gave me enormous amounts of money to save science, and in

the same grand manner he went on spending money here, and three years ago

he suddenly died.     Everything went well, but he suddenly died.    Then I had

suddenly to look into the Institute 1 s financial affairs, and then it turned

out--well, we never paid income tax because according to the law, if some­

body worked for mankind and was on a temporary fellowship, or grant, then

he didn't pay tax for three years, or how long I don't know.        Anyway, he

didn't pay income tax for us.

        Now, when I took over the finances--Kennedy came in, and the govern­

ment needed money.     They went over the tax exempt institutions, and sudden­

ly they said, "Why didn't you pay income tax?      You owe us income tax for

the last ten years."

        I had to pay for myself eighteen thousand dollars income tax.        We had

very low salaries because we had the advantage not to pay income tax, so

we accepted very low salaries.     The Institute had no money, so I suddenly

had to pay--I had a house here in Woods Hole which I kept for my old age,
                                                                         80




thinking that when I get old, this house is too big for me.        Well, I had

to sell that house for twenty thousand dollars to pay my income tax.            Then

my associates came and said, "How shall we pay income tax?        We have no

money.     Dur salary was very low, and we could put nothing aside.      We have

no money."

        My first man said, "I must pay eight thousand dollars."

        What to do--! had eight thousand dollars, so I gave it to him.         My

other assistant said, "I owe three thousand dollars."

        "Well, here it is"--from my own.    I paid it.    All my money I gave

away.     All right, but before that when Dr. Rath died, I had to look into

the finances, and I couldn't cover thirty-eight thousand dollars with

bills--thirty-eight thousand dollars with bills.         He was careless, or

what--! don't know.       He was a grand gentleman, but there were no bills.

I owed this to the NIH--! had a big grant from the NIH, and I could not

cover it, and I was suddenly left with the Institute.         I had still ten

thousand dollars in the bank, so I gave it to the National Institute of

Health from my own, but twenty-eight thousand dollars remained without

coverage.     I was very worried that some journalist would come and poke that

out and make a big fuss about it, so I took the obligation--! wrote to NIH,

"Don 1 t worry.     I will pay it back two thousand five hundred dollars a year

from my own," and I really intended to do so.       I had that money in the

bank, but I had to give away all the money I had for income tax, not a pen­

ny was left--see, so I owe still and I cannot pay this debt of twenty-five

hundred dollars a year to the NIH.       The other day they wrote me, "What

about this?       Since you obliged yourself to pay this, why don't you pay it?"

        Well, I don't have it.    That's the simple answer, but that was not all.
                                                                        Bl




I owe twenty-eight thousand dollars, and I haven't paid it yet because I

just could not.    But the real trouble came now.      After all my money went

to the last, suddenly the tax inspector came from New Bedford, and said-­

well, I developed a new centrifuge, a very useful instrument.        I took out

a patent, and I gave the patent to my Institute.        I didn't need the money.

I made a contract, and the money goes directly to my Institute.        I never

saw a penny of it, and that was that.     Well, the tax inspector comes along

and says, "You had the right to revoke your donation, so we look upon it

as if you had revoked it and had given the money every year to your Insti­

tute.    That means that that was your private income, and you owe us thirty

thousand dollars income tax for this donation."

        Now, I went to a tax expert here who beat it down to half.     Half of

what I owe was thirty thousand dollars.     The other half of it is still

not processed--the first two or three years.        The tax expert beat what I

owe down to twelve thousand dollars.     Of course, he charged me fifteen hun­

dred dollars for it, but now I owe twelve thousand dollars income tax, and

if I don't pay that, I go to jail, so that's how a scientist who spent all

his life and gave a big present to science which was not supported by the

state, basic research--my own Institute got an enormous present from a poor

man because that patent brought every year about eight thousand dollars.

Ten years, eighty thousand dollars, and I am punished now to pay thirty

thousand dollars income tax for the money I have never seen and gave to

the service of mankind.     They said, "You have to pay income tax because if

you work for mankind and mankind is your employer, you're an employee, so

you pay income tax."

        Well, I paid all my money for income tax.     I owe twenty-eight thousand
                                                                     B2




dollars to NIH, and I owe thirty thousand dollars to the tax inspector

which is now twelve, but this is only for half.     Another ten will come

which I don't have, and I have to pay it.    That is how the finances of a

scientist looks, and it's all from this damn King.     If I had had that hun­

dred thousand dollars, I would never have gotten into trouble--you see.

If Dr. Rath, my secretary, hadn't spent his own money on me--you see, there

would be no trouble, and all for one sentence, that I thought everybody is

honest in science.    I told this King what Vitamin C is, and I have been

punished for that all my life until the present day.     These are my finan­

ces, and I think that this is now enough.    You have it.

     You see, I never did anything about King because once it was all over,

to mix it up all again and make a big fuss didn't interest me, and for sci­

ence it doesn't matter, you see, whether I discovered Vitamin C, or King.

For science it's immaterial, so why fuss about it, and if you mix up dirt,

you get dirty even if you are clean.     I never did anything about it.

     There was one amusing incident in this whole stuff.     This King--I al­

ways wanted this King to attack me in front, and say, "I am discoverer of

Vitamin C."

     Then I could answer him and tell exactly the story, but he never at­

tacked me in front, but always when I was absent, when I was in Szeged,

Hungary.   Here he went around saying, "That's a thief over there," but you

never hear that.     Nobody will write you that you are called a thief, but

he had a crazy assistant, Mr. Cox, and one day this Cox wrote a little note

in Science on the priority of Vitamin C, that it was King who discovered it

and Szent-Gyorgyi has nothing to do with it.     ["Crystalline vitamin C and

hexuronic acid" B6 Science 540-542 (December 10, 1937)]     I just wanted to
                                                                          83




give a short answer saying that priority problems should be left to poster­

ity ["Identification of Vitamin C" 87 Science 214-215 {March 4, 1938)], but

my English is very poor, and I said "posteriority" instead of posterity,

and "posterior" is this--you know.     The next time I went to England W. T.

Astbury, the great physicist, who was a great friend of mine--he said that

he received a big howl.     He said, "You are the most ingenious man I know

because with one word,    'posterior', you said your opinion about all those

people"--you see, because if you say you are a posterior, it means you are

an ass.    I said, "I never said that!"

       Then I found that instead of saying posterity, I said "posteriority."

       That's the only amusing story in the whole dirty business.         It was

very dirty and very painful and still with me right to this present day be­

cause I still owe twenty-eight thousand dollars, and if this hadn't hap­

pened, if I had gotten that hundred thousand dollars, I would be a rich man

today.     I would have put all this money in my pocket because I had to give

it to my Institute which had no money.     I would have a hundred thousand

dollars in the bank today, but instead I have a fifty thousand dollar debt,

and I gave away all my spare money which I with great trouble, economized,

had accumulated, so that's how a leading scientist lives here in America

who worked all his life for mankind.

       [Looking through one of his books on muscle]      These threads are new-­

these things.


This trouble has had great continuity.


       The worst trouble was that I lost my wife four years ago in an awful

way.     You know, cancer eats a person up bit by bit.     I loved her.     She was
                                                                        84




a wonderful woman, my second wife.    She was a wonderful woman, really won­

derful, and eaten up by cancer bit by bit--you know.     The wrong thing about

medicine is that it denies to you, a cancer patient, the possibility to die

in decency--you know, because cancer eats you away pretty fast, but they

pull it out.   It's the surgeon who destroys you--you know.      My wife had can­

cer, and they operated on her and operated and operated.      Eventually she

had a metastasis in the brain, and they operated the brain and irradiated

her brain and destroyed her personality.     It was terrible to go through all

that and left alone suddenly after--well, for two or three years that was

by far the worst difficulty of all.     I got through somehow.     I couldn't

really work for two or three years.     In my present research which I will

tell you about someday I am on the verge of making really great discover­

ies, but for a number of years I had a complete blank when my wife died-­

awful trouble, and then on top of that all these financial difficulties.


What's the origin of the variation in the centrifuge that you made?


     I made a centrifuge in which while it is running at very high speed

you can feed in material, and it will run out again cleared up, while the

sediment is left in the tubes.   It is a continuous thing.       Now in modern

genetics bacteria are very important.     In a bacterial culture, say a liter

has hardly any bacteria, say, a few milligrams.     The centrifuge through

which you can send ten or a hundred liters and keep all the bugs--you see,

that was a very difficult problem, how you can get in fluid and get out

from a centrifuge while it was running at high speed in cases where you

have a very small quantity of sedimenting material.


The development of a tool is something new.
                                                                    85




      That was a very, very interesting thing.   It was a difficult problem

to solve.   Of course, as you know, once you have the principles, then an­

other firm makes it too, but the only good one is the one I made which is

sold by Sorvall.   They are a good firm, so that's that.   That's the Szent­

Gyorgyi-Bloome Centrifuge.   Bloome is a mechanic who made the mechanics of

it.   [See Letter A. 5-G. to P., October 23, 1967]

      Oh, that's a good sign, a lovely sign [The dinner bell.]
                                                                         86




Penzance Point, Wednesday, June 21, 1967.



        The Hungarian university consists--the European universities on the

whole--consists of departments.      Every department has his head who is mas­

ter in his own house.     That house may be small, or it may be big, but he

is master in his house, or if you have a call as a professor you get a lab­

oratory.     You get an institute, or whatever they call them, so I got an In­

stitute for Chemistry.     That was a fairly neglected institute, a small, not

very well equipped, but I was there.      My first struggle was with the assis­

tants whom I found because they already thought that they were in the white

collar class.     They wouldn't touch a thing--you see, by their own hands and

a professor much less.     I remember one amusing incident right in the begin­

ning.     I asked the old attendant, "Where is the lavoratory?      The rest room?"

        He said, "The professor has a special rest room nobody else may use

locked by a key."

        I said, "Where is the key?   Give me the key."

        He said, "I cannot give you the key because you cannot carry the key

as a professor.     I will carry the key for you."

        He took a bunch of paper in one hand, the key in the other, and we

started on this procession to the lavoratory which he opened up for me-­

you know.     So I had to change all this spirit.    I had to find new people,

any my way of finding new people there was simply by taking the exams my­

self orally.     My method of examination was that if I asked something and

got a standard answer, I was no more interested.         I just went along and

gave exams orally.     If I saw some intelligent signs, then I asked a more

difficult question and more difficult questions and more difficult ques-
                                                                      87




tions, deeper and deeper.     I found three people who were very good and

showed signs.     One was F. B. Straub who has become later quite famous.     He

helped me isolate Actin.     Then there was K. Laki who is fairly well-known

as a biochemist, not very famous, but quite a good biochemist, and the

third is in England.     I had only two jobs I could fill, so I only took two

of the three.

     That was my method, and we made a small institute.      I took a very good

girl, Miss I. Banga, who came there to me, and later when we changed over

into a new institute which was bigger and better, then I had one or two

Indians, whatnot, and even later I took over the Organic Chemical Insti­

tute--as a protectant, so to say.     That was nothing grand.   It was a small

university.     It was a quiet life, and I am most successful in research if

I am left alone.     Then, you see, I had a small institute with few people,

and that was that.     There was nothing especially interesting about it.


The publication of papers from this period is enormous.


     Oh yes--this was a very fruitful period, and we had some very inter­

esting results.     The whole Krebs cycle began there, so to say.   There I

went back--you see, the first at Groningen I started with the plants which

turned brown.     That was interesting.   Then I shifted to plants which didn't

turn brown, and that yielded up ascorbic acid--that study which was quite

a result.     This is an example of what I say, that I have big philosophical

ideas and do little experiments.     The big philosophical idea was that there

was no difference between potato and you, myself and grass.      Also it does­

n't matter what I study, and perhaps plants were simpler, and after I found

ascorbic acid, I shifted to the animal tissues.      Already in Groningen I
                                                                      BB




studied the relation of oxidation to reduction, and there I started the

basic study of the Krebs cycle, built the foundation for the Krebs cycle.

Later I got half the Nobel Prize for that study.      I simply continued in

Szeged.

        Szeged contributed a great deal to the Vitamin studies because it

just happens to be the center of the pepper industry.      You see, one had to

produce ascorbic acid in considerable quantity.     That's why I went a whole

year to America, but what I could make there was not enough and especially

when it turned out to be Vitamin C.      It was very important to have enough

material to enable many people to work on it, find out the structure, syn­

thesize it.     I tried all plants that I could lay my hands on in Cambridge

as a material, and none of them worked.     On a small scale, with several of

them I could make ascorbic acid in crystal, but on a big scale it didn't

work.     It was too difficult.   It happens that paprika is enormously rich

in Vitamin C, and Szeged was the center of the paprika industry.      I had al­

ready forgotten this need for big quantities when one evening my wife gave

me pepper for dinner.     I didn't want to eat it--you know, I didn't know

what to do, how to get out of eating it, and then it occurred to me that

I had not tried this plant yet, so I said, "I won't eat it.      I will take

it to the laboratory."

        I went at night to the laboratory, and an hour later I knew it was

very rich in Vitamin C, and a few weeks later I had kilograms of it which

I distributed all over the world to people who wanted to work with it.

That's how its structure was found out.      Many people were unable to work

on it until I had quantities of the material, so it was a mixed proposi­

tion.     I was not very much interested in Vitamin C.   I was interested in
                                                                        89




this oxidation business, and then at the very end I shifted to muscle.

     Why I shifted to muscle is simply that I studied so many lines, so

many dimensions, animals, molecules, electrons and all sorts of things

with the idea to collect enough knowledge to analyze a function.       That's

much more difficult--to analyze a biological function, something which is

alive.    You call something alive which does something.     These oxidation

systems are nice systems in the bottle, and they work all right, but it's

not life, not a function, so I shifted towards the end of my stay in Sze­

ged, the last two years, 1938, 1939, to muscle.        Muscle is a classical ma­

terial.    Since the beginning of physiology it's the most classical material

for study because there are such enormous changes which you can measure.

You see, science is the more successful the more there is to measure.           Sci­

ence is the art of measuring in a way, and in a muscle you have these enor­

mous changes in energy, shape, length, hardness, in elasticity--everything,

so it was not only the classical material, but nobody knew how muscle

worked and what it was really built of.

     Almost a hundred years ago there was a German scientist who got out

protein in fairly pure condition in big quantities called myosin which was

evidently part of the contracting machinery, but that was that.        Nobody

could make myosin move.

     You see, if you embark on a new field--I said to myself, "I will start

to study muscle."    Now, if you go to a new field, the question is what will

you do with yourself?     What do you do?   All right.    It's a new field, but

what do you do with muscle?     How do you start it?     There is one thing which

you can always do, and that is to repeat old work, classical old work.           The

old scientists--they didn't have many machines, but they were very good
                                                                     90




observers and watched the material very closely, so you can repeat these

old experiments, repeat them and see whether you can find something new

for yourself.   As I said my work is composed of enormous philosophical

ideas and what is in my finger tips, smelling it, watching all the small

details, so I started repeating this work of the German a hundred years

ago, W. Kuhne, and made myosin.    Watching it very closely I found that if

I made the extraction as Kuhne did, I got a "thin" extract like KUhne, but

when I made it slowly, I got a much more viscous, sticky substance without

having much more protein in there, so that it couldn't be the quantity of

the protein, it had to be the quality of the protein which was different.

But now, the protein was to a great extent the same myosin that this fel­

low found a hundred years ago.    Evidently there had to be something new,

and that new thing was a new protein which I discovered with Banga.        We

didn't publish it because just then this Straub, my pupil, returned from

the Army.   He had been in service.   He came home from the Army, and I

thought that this would give him a great boost if I gave him this great

discovery, and I said, "Now, you isolate this new protein."

     To discover a new protein that does something--! thought that for

this young man who had lost two or three years in military service, this

would be a great boost.    He did it beautifully, isolated actin and made a

world reputation with this actin discovery.     Then I found that this actin

combined with myosin.     It was a complex protein which has become very

sticky.

     Another German professor showed how you can make little threads out

of this myosin, so I made little threads, but they didn't move.     "Why the

hell don't they move?     A muscle should move wherever it is, so probably
                                                                         91




something is missing, maybe the small molecules which it is in touch with

in the living material."

        I made a boiled juice of muscle--just extracted with hot water that

will destroy the proteins and bring out the small molecules which are sta­

ble.     All right, I put my little threads into that boiled juice, and they

moved--you see, that was perhaps the greatest excitement of my life, to see

motion in the bottle of more or less known substances for the first time.

That was a great, a very great experience.

        Then the question was what was there in the juice that makes it move?

That was not a too difficult question.      I found that it was ATP--Adenosine

Triphosphate, and ions had to be there in a certain concentration.            That

came together with an observation of a Russian physiologist, W. A. Engel­

hardt who found that myosin, this protein, splits off phosphates from ATP.

Then this idea of high energy phosphate bond and ATP began to be clarified.

So I said, "Evidently the ATP is the energy source.         ATP is what gives the

energy and makes the actomyosin contract."

        That was the discovery of actomyosin which is a serious discovery,

and 1 1 m sure that if I hadn't had the Nobel Prize earlier, I would have

had--! even happen to know that the Nobel Committee considered giving me

a second Nobel Prize, but they decided that they couldn't do that because

it is a principle never to give to one person the same Nobel Prize--you

know.     I could get a Chemical Nobel Prize.   If I had had the Chemical Nobel

Prize for the Vitamin work, then I would have had the Medical Nobel Prize

for the muscle work, but since I had the medical prize for the Vitamin.

work, I couldn't get it twice--well, it doesn't matter.         One Nobel Prize

is plenty.     One doesn't need two.   That's ridiculous.     That was that.
                                                                          92




      There was one funny business.     I described what I found, but before

I could publish I had to go underground.       I was certain that I would be

killed.     The chances were so much against me, and I didn't want these ob­

servations to get lost for the world's literature, so I sent them to The­

orell.    Since only Swedes can publish in Acta Scandinavica--but having been

made a Swedish citizen, I was allowed to publish there.          I sent my manu­

script to Theorell for publication in the Acta Scandinavica, and when I

sent it, I just happened to be hiding in the Swedish Legation, and the

Gestapo couldn't find me.      Theorell, having no idea where I was, sent me

a wire of acknowledgment, saying that he had received my paper and posted

it to "Professor Szent-Gyorgyi, in care of the Swedish Legation", expect­

ing the Swedish Legation to find me.      He had no idea about this Nazi

business.     The Gestapo read this and thought, "Naturally, that's where

he is."

      There I got into trouble and had to run away from the Legation, so

Theorell almost killed me.      He 1 s a great friend of mine.    Really two days

later the Nazis broke into the Legation and destroyed it trying to find

me.


How was your theory of muscles received initially?


      You know that is a very funny question.      I mean my answer will be

funny--you see, you can know a great discovery by being rejected first.

You see, if they swallow it right away, it 1 s not a great discovery.          It

is rejected.     A great discovery has three stages--first it is rejected.

They say, "It 1 s nonsense."

      Then they say, "It's all right, but it has been known a hundred
                                                                     93




years ago."

       The third stage is that it is forgotten altogether that you have done

it.    It's just taken into the textbooks, and that's that.   I made two dis­

coveries in my life that stood and which were really definite discoveries-­

Vitamin C and the muscle.     Now there was one Vitamin C expert in England

who had a great name and who did nothing all his life, only studied Vita­

min C.     He didn't know what it was, but he was the greatest authority on

Vitamin C.    When I published ascorbic acid is Vitamin C, then he at once

put out a paper in Nature saying that he worked all his life on Vitamin C,

and he still knows little about it, but there is one thing that he knows

for certain, that I must be wrong.     The whole thing in England was thrown

out because the greatest authority said that.     Later they kicked him out

because he held down research for years on this.

       Now about muscle, they had one great muscle authority who died since

and who published two full columns in Nature saying this is a dirty mix­

ture of wrong ideas and wrong experiments--two whole columns in Nature by

the greatest muscle expert, the only expert they had on muscle chemistry,

so that's how a great discovery is received.

       Even until today, if I say something new and it 1 s accepted, I get a

bit sad.     I think, "I must be getting old, and that's not really new."

       You see, I am accustomed that it is rejected, and one of the nicest

compliments I had was by a Professor Wald at Harvard, a very fine biochem­

ist.     He introduced my colloquium--! gave a seminar--by saying that "any­

body can get easily a Ph.D. by showing that Szent-Gyorgyi is wrong, and

twenty years later it is easy to get a Ph.D. by showing that he is right

after all."
                                                                     94




     That was a very nice compliment, and that is really so--first you can

get a Ph.D. by showing that it is all wrong.


When you came to Woods Hole, you developed a new system, a new approach

to muscle, reexamined your own work.


     Here early I did two things--! analyzed what is the stiffness of

death--rigor mortis.    It was an old classical problem.   Nobody knew any­

thing about it.    I worked on it with my second wife here in a corner of

the Marine Biological Laboratory, and we found that stiffness is nothing

else but that ATP is decomposed.    Without ATP the muscle stiffens up.

     Then another thing I did--! put the muscle in fifty percent glycerol.

Then I found that if you leave it in the deep freeze--the muscle--even two

years later, or ten years later it will still contract like a fresh muscle.

You can preserve life, a living process, a biological process in fifty per­

cent glycerol.    Since then in England they use that very extensively--the

whole world does--for conserving sperm of prize bulls.     Then they can go

and fertilize a cow.    Of course they forget to mention that I was the first

to do that.   The English--the rest doesn't exist for them, but anyway, I

was the first to conserve a biological activity by doing it in fifty per­

cent glycerol, and that's still the best method for doing it, and it is

used widely in animal husbandry now.

     You want to inquire into background--! used fifty percent glycerol,

and a few months ago B. Kaminer, my associate here, asked me, "Tell me how

did you know that fifty percent glycerol was the best?     Why did you put it

in fifty percent glycerol which is known to be the best?"

     The only answer I could give him was, "My boy, I didn't even know why
                                                                        95




I put it in glycerol at all.     It was just a feel, that glycerol must be

something which agreed with muscle.     I know glycerol, and I know muscle,

and I think they will like each other."

     This is just this feel of a biochemist, an unconscious feeling, sense

of the finger tips chemistry, or whatever, by watching the material--not

just putting it into a machine and watching the pointer,'but working with

live material.   Most of my results, if I had any, come from this intimate

touch with life, so it's a mixture of great theories and little experiments

and close watching of the material.    Without a philosophical background

you wouldn't find these ideas.    You wouldn't go into muscle.   You wouldn't

study plants without developing a philosophy first, and maybe you wouldn't

even notice the little differences then.     When I see some discrepancy, I

follow up, and then things come out.

     Now, at the moment, I am working on something in research about which

I can tell you later, in which a reaction is very important.      I really don't

know why I did it really, but I did it, and my whole work turns on that re­

action now.   I 1 m going to talk about it in Paris this coming week.        This is

the unconscious feel of a man who sits from early morning until late at

night in the laboratory and works with the living material.      At night I

think great thoughts, and in the daytime I do little experiments, so that's

how that work developed.   Here I started working on growth and cell divi­

sion which I am working on now and which came about--well, it was a feel­

ing about ten years ago.   I worked twenty years on muscle, and when I

went into muscle I was a revolutionary in muscle work.     Then I found ten

years ago that after twenty years of work I became a reactionary.        I was

fighting for things which I did twenty years earlier and had become not
                                                                       96




outdated, but there were new things, and I began to fight against the new

things.   Everybody has this, and I noticed this one day, that I was a reac­

tionary, that I had lost my creative vision by living too long in one

groove--twenty years.    In the beginning I was a pioneer.    So it was time

to change, so I began to change.

     I 1 11 tell you how I changed completely.   I can tell you right now.

You see, I was still with ideas on muscle, and I found that it was well

known that the thymus gland, this gland, had something to do with muscle

because in myoasthenia, a muscle disease of weakness, there is something

wrong with the thymus.    I thought, "Well, there is a connection.     I know

a great deal about muscle, but there is still something missing.      Maybe

there's a nice connection, so I will make extracts of the thymus and see

whether I can get in there anywhere."

     First, I worked on goats.     A man who had myotonia, a muscle disease,

sent me a herd of myotonic goats.     There are goats which have a disease

which is called myotonia which is the opposite of myoasthenia.       Myoasthen­

ia is weakness.    Myotonia is that they are too strong.     Man has this dis­

ease, but goats can have it too.     Two hundred years or so ago, somebody

brought a herd of myotonic goats from Egypt here to this country, and he

showed them in public shows.     They were thought to have some bad spirits,

some devil in them that made them stiffen up.     The man died, and the herd

got dispersed.    Some of these goats got into Tennessee.     The farmers liked

them because they are easy to catch.     If you frighten them, they stiffen

up and you can catch them.     They became popular, and this patient who had

this myotonic condition sent me a whole herd.     I worked for a time on goats.

You can do some interesting measurements on them, but then I had to give
                                                                           97




them up because they smelled too much, and the Marine Biological Labora­

                                                11
tory shouldn't smell of goats.     I thought,        1 must find some indicator of

an active substance."

     I thought that growth may be something which reacts to everything,

whatever it is, so I will study growth, and see whether thymus does some­

thing with it.   Now what growth shall I study?         Cancer cells grow fast,

and I can see rapid changes, so I took cancer cells, and slowly I drifted

into cancer and growth, the question of cell division, what regulates cell

division.   I happened to find that there is in the thymus gland a substance

which inhibits growth which I call Retine and one which promotes growth

which I call Promine.    Well, of course, if you find such a thing, the ques­

tion is what is it?     Then you must isolate it, and that's an enormous, big,

difficult proposition.     I began to isolate it using cancer cells as growth

material, so you see, slowly I shifted from muscle into growth problems and

from growth into cancer problems.     I used cancer only as an indica~or for

the inhibition of growth, or the promotion of growth.           Then I found that

cancer is too complicated, and that there were too many pitfalls, so I

shifted to simple cells and tried to find out what regulates their growth,

what inhibits and promotes growth in single cells, all sorts of cells, sin­

gle cancer cells, not cancer in an animal, but single cancer cells.             I

shifted almost unnoticed into an entirely new field, and I am completely

now in this growth problem, what regulates growth, and that has led lately

to very exciting results which I think are important and will develop into

quite big research in time.

     You see, I found this Retine which retards growth, and we found why

it retards growth.    It retards protein synthesis.         We could analyze that.
                                                                     98




Then there's another substance which promotes growth.     I thought in the

beginning that they were antagonistic.     There was this chance that they

may be very important, even in pathology, that cancer may be a disequilib­

rium of this balance between the two, but that always sounded a bit fishy;

that Nature should produce one thing and also produce something against it.

Somehow that didn't fit into my philosophy, and lately I found--how shall

I say, there is a substance, a very common chemical substance, which was

known to promote cell multiplication.     A group in Jerusalem found that if

you feed a rat that substance, then cells begin to multiply in the liver

very fast because it gets its foot into the liver, so I said to myself,

"If that promotes growth and my theory is correct, and growth is held back

in the normal cells by this Retine, then this growth promoter must do some­

thing with Retine."

        [I took extracts which I knew had that growth inhibitor, and I added

this artificial promoter.     I put them together, and then I added something

which indicated the loosening of an electron, that an electron comes off

the substance.     In that way I could find that what this substance does is

act as an- oxidizing agent.    It oxidizes sulfide SH groups, inactivates

them.    That's how it inhibits.   It combines with the sulfide groups, in­

activates them, ahd thus inhibits growth.     This substance makes it that

instead of taking up electrons, it gives off electrons.      I could show you.

That's an atomic theory, a special pair of electrons which can easily be

given off.     This promine is not antagonistic.   It just makes this substance

not take up electrons, but give up electrons, and the cells begin to multi­

ply because there are electrons, so I am shifting slowly to an entirely

new concept of regulation, eventually not regulated by substances, but by
                                                                          99




electrons which go into the cell.        The question of whether a cell is rest­

ing, or multiplying depends on the number and quality of electrons which

get into the system which is an entirely new concept of biochemistry, so

to say, but I must still work it out more in detail.         You see how that will

be a great discovery in the end when it is all finished up.]          [A. S-G.

writes:      "This is quite senseless.    See my 'Gregory Pincus Memorial Pa­

per.   rn]
        [Now we have isolated Retine, and we know now that it is a substance

consisting of two parts.      We have isolated the one part, and until now have

analyzed what it is and synthesized it.          The other part we still don't know

yet what it is, so we still can't produce the cell inhibitor in big quanti­

ty in activity yet, but that will come.          We will find out what this other

part is.      Someday we will find out what the other part is, and then we can

build up the whole molecule outside the body, and maybe we can stop cancer

growth.      I don't know.]   [A. S-G. writes:     "The situation has changed since.

See my Pincus paper.]

       You see, the one important thing in this is not to be carried away by

the idea of wanting to be useful.        As soon as you want to be useful and

cure cancer, you are finished.       Then you lose your balance, publish too

quickly.      One must remain on the basic level and just ask, "How does Nature

do things?"

        You try to find out every detail, and usefulness comes by itself.         Ei­

ther it comes, or it doesn't come, but one should never try to be useful.

As soon as a scientist tries to be useful, he's out.          That's what kills

Russian science.      They always try to do something which will be useful for

the state.      You can't build science that way.      You must be led by the crav-
                                                                         100




ing for knowledge, or the craving for understanding.        You see, that's the

secret of research.


As I understand it, your study of muscle earlier projected a desire on your

part for a new language, really--Bioenergetics, for example, that book.


       Yes, that was an attempt to get into electronic dimension.       I had now

these actomyosin molecules, and they contracted, but we didn't understand

why, so I thought, "Probably we are in the wrong dimension still, not the

dimension where things happen.     I must go one deeper."

       There is only one dimension lower, and that is the electronic dimen­

sion where things really happen.     There's no lower dimension because then

one would get into nuclear chemistry, but that has nothing to do with biol­

ogy.    The nucleus for the biologist is a point charge--nothing else.         We

have nothing to do with the structure of the nucleus fortunately, so the

lowest dimension for us is the electronic dimension.        That 1 s the bottom of

Nature for us, for the biologist, so Bioenergetics was an attempt to get

into that.    I studied it, and when I saw it work, I thought I would write

it down for others who know just as little as I know one year ago.         It may

help them to do the same thing.     That's why I wrote that book, and then I

wrote Submolecular Biology which is a continuation of the first book.

       Now, I 1 m really in that dimension again.   You see, I tried to shift

back into the cellular dimension, cell division, but my work automatically

again took me down to the electronic dimension, and now I 1 m in the elec­

tronic dimension again.     Then I can go on someday to the whole cell, but

for the time being I feel that the solution for the real mechanism is in

the electronic dimensions.     In research it's difficult to say what leads
                                                                         101




it.   One just goes step, step and is led by instinct more than conscious

things.


This is going to sound as though it's coming from center field, but what

intrigued me a great deal.both by "Bioenergetics" and "Submolecular Biology"

is the whole study of charge transfer.       How elusive can it be even in the

laboratory?     Measurement comes into play again.     How does a biochemist--you

know, think in these terms of charge transfer and the measurement that is

necessary to study it?


      It's very easy.    I give you immediately an example.     Now I am working

on a theory which may turn out to become a very important feature in bio­

chemistry.     You know what entropy is.     Entropy is disorder on all sorts of

levels.    Order is "negative entropy."      In the body you have all sorts of

orders.    For instance, inside the cell there is potassium.      Outside the

cell is sodium, chiefly.     That is already a negative entropy.     Things are

separated in order.     That's decrease in entropy--order--you see.     If you

have a pack of cards and just throw them down, they are shuffled complete­

ly, and we say the entropy is high.        That means the disorder is high, and

when you arrange them by all kings and queens, then I would say that there

is high order and the entropy is low.        Entropy means shuffled state, and

it's a bit confusing that you are really after order, and you call it low,

low entropy.     It is a bit confusing, but it is that way, so we have to ad­

just it.     Anyway, now entropy always tries to increase, shuffles Nature,

but you can always make order again if you use up energy.        If you have

shuffled cards, you can order them if you do a little work.        With energy

you can lower the entropy, but entropy tries to increase all the time, and
                                                                      102




one of the basic features of life is that it tries to keep the entropy al­

ways low.

     Now, one of the great problems which nobody dares to ask yet is what

keeps the entropy low?    Where does the energy come from and in what form

does it come which keeps the entropy low?    That's a very fundamental prob­

lem which nobody has dared to ask yet, and I am just asking it now.        Now

every biochemist would say immediately of course high energy phosphate

bonds like ATP that gives energy, but I say to myself, "No, that's nonsense.

A bond cannot keep order.    A bond is something between two molecules that

has no outside action, and if you split the bond then it goes into heat.         A

bond cannot make order.     I need something to keep order, something, a form

of energy which has outside action, has an action radius."

     Such a form of energy is an electron which has a high energy.     I

studied a great deal the steroids, like cortisone--you know, the adrenal

steroids.   I worked a great deal on this.    I almost discovered myself the

steroids--! just missed it by an inch in my very early days.     I extirpated

many adrenals and I watched animals, and the symptoms which the animal has

nobody understands--you know, potassium gets mixed up with sodium, and the

water gets in the wrong place, so looking at it, it looks like increasing

the entropy.   Something is missing which holds down the entropy.    Now we

know that what can cure these animals is cortisone, so in my speculation,

does cortisone give this energy?    Does it somehow give high energy elec­

trons?   Now, it could give high energy electrons only by charge transfer-­

if you transfer an electron from one molecule to another, there's a charge

transfer.   Now you can show that if you take cortisone and take a molecule

which would change its color if it takes up an electron, and if that system
                                                                        103




develops certain new qualities, then you say it is charge transfer.

        You see, so I ask does cortisone give any signs of a tendency to give

off very active electrons?     And it does.   I take an acceptor which would

accept an electron with changes in color, and I put it together with corti­

sone.     I neutralize it in a certain solvent, and it changes color.     That

means an electron shoots over from cortisone--you see, so you can show it

with color reactions, and with the electron spin resonance machine you can

show free electrons.     That I couldn't show yet, [A. S-G. writes:     "I have

shown it since.~but the color reactions very strongly indicate that corti­

sone can shoot off an electron.      This is an entirely new field, and nobody

is in that field yet.     That may lead to a great disappointment, or open up

an entirely new door to an entirely new field of biochemistry, a new dimen­

sion.     The chief thing is to keep out the idea of usefulness of your ideas

because all these things--they are not useful.      They are just basic knowl­

edge, but through this basic knowledge you might in the end become useful

and do something about cancer, but if you want to do something directly

about cancer, then you are out.      You never get anywhere.

        That's not an explanation.   You must study these very basic phenomena.

That's how these problems develop.      Now I'm up to my ears in this new field

of-electron transfer, and I find that charge transfer is a very common pro­

cess in biology.     Biologists don't know about it, but it seems that there

is a great promiscuity among molecules, and electrons go very easily over

from one molecule to another which makes an entirely new outlook on bio­

chemistry.     Until now they had sort of a puritanistic outlook.     This is one

molecule, and either they marry, or they don't marry [form a bond], but

there is much promiscuity, and electrons just go from one to another in
                                                                       104




sort of charge transfer.     These are very important reactions which can be

studied and what exactly happens can be shown.      This is what I am doing

now.

        You see how it develops.   How does it develop?   Well, I don't know.

One is just led from one thing to another and does one thing after another

and slowly one gets new philosophies, new theories, new light with little

details on big problems.     For instance, one sees a new change; that maybe

life is very much more connected with the shift in electrons.       Then there

is the whole problem of entropy which is one of the greatest problems.          It

is a great deal of philosophy and all sorts of little experiments.         I can't

give a clear answer.


That's all right.     You make much in the books of the concept of order--

organization.


        Yes.


But this doesn't mean that the organization isn't promiscuous, as you just

indicated.     That might be part of its organization.


        It's a part of the organization.   Organization itself is a dead

thing--you see.     It must be there.   Otherwise it gets mixed up, but then

inside there is a great deal of exchange of electrons.       Electrons can go

over only if there is a great order.       If there is no order, electrons can't

move.     It's a very mixed proposition and very difficult to define, and it's

difficult to say why I do it.      I would be just unhappy if I couldn't-­

that's all.     I don't want to achieve.    I don't want to make a career.

There is no career for me.     I am old.    I will have to go out some day,
                                                                              105




but as long as I am alive, I want to do that sort of thing because I like

to do it.       That's that.     It 1 s like playing chess, or something.


You weren 1 t   1   as I understand you, you weren't entirely satisfied that you

understood muscle.


      No, we don't understand muscle, still don't understand muscle.


This, in turn, leads you into other areas which may be relevant, may not

be relevant.         It's a question of feel.


      I don't think in the end it will explqin muscle to me.             It 1 s a good

idea to change subjects every twenty years, or every ten years because one

gets stale and too much set and too much in a groove.              I change every ten

or twenty years.          It was fun.    It's very difficult to define how these

things go.          I wake up at night and think.     Very often I wake up--I am tor­

tured by a problem which I can't solve--maybe a small, technical, or a big­

ger problem--and then I wake up suddenly from my dream with the answer, so

evidently my brain goes working even while I am sleeping, so it just goes

on reasoning and arguing, and suddenly I wake up with an answer.               I remem­

ber mostly I solve my problems unconsciously in my dreams.              Conscious think­

ing and hard work at it is only the priming process, and then the thing set­

tles by itself.          The unconscious is very important.

      For instance, I have a problem.            It may be even a political problem,

and I want to do something.             I want to write a letter to the New York Times

about it, but I just can't.             I just can 1 t put the words together, and then

one morning I get up and go to my writing desk, and I put it down--there it

is.   Just like with this Pslamus.            These things all troubled me--what is
                                                                     106




God and what is our relation to other people, and then without thinking of

it suddenly you just sit down and there it is.     You wrote it down, and you

don't know why you wrote it, or what you wrote.     It was all unconsciously

arranged into a pattern so that the subconscious is very important.        Con­

scious is only necessary for the priming, because if you don't think con­

sciously, you 1 11 never solve it unconsciously.


Is it your tendency--yesterday I asked you about records of the laboratory,

and you said that you didn't keep many records, that you did things over

enough ....


     I keep very few records.


The method is to work constantly at the same thing until you know it.


     Yes, until I really know it, and then I can write it down from memory

mostly.     Naturally, if I do little things--if I have to try out some con­

centration, and I find that it is 009, then I have to put that down, but

many things I don't put down and have no records, and there is no use.        I

would have such a heap that I could never look at them.


Hopkins said that research was an artistic vocation.


     Yes.


It's not a scribbler's job, not a clerkship.


     That is true.     That is so.


Part of it, I suspect, is just dreaming away.
                                                                         107




        Newton was asked how he made his discoveries, and he said, "By always

thinking of them"--always, always, always.     That's what I do.      We sit at

table and talk about things, and my brain works over some experiments, and

suddenly I get an idea that I should do this, or I should do that.         I get

a piece of paper, write it up briefly, or I will forget it, or at night-­

or whenever, thinking all the time about it.      That's the only way to really

get somewhere like Newton--by always thinking of it.


The image you used which I enjoyed was that research was like catching

cold.


        Yes.


It gets into your stream and tortures you until you reduce it somehow, or

solve it.


        Yes, turn it out somehow.   Yes, that is so.


That really makes it more of an intuitive process.


        This is so.   I think this all comes down to my childhood when at the

family table I learned that the only important thing in life is intellec­

tual creativity.      That got into me, and that is the only value.     If my fath­

er had been a businessman, my idea would be to make a new factory, or some

business transactions.      That would have been the important thing.     If he

had been a politician, I might have gone into politics to try to be presi­

dent of something, but all this never interested me--more or less only what

I sucked in as a child, and we can never efface it, what is put into us as

children.
                                                                      108




No 1 we can only help ride it.


     Yes.   There is more to drink here--plenty more.


How much insight and aid do you get from other minds?


     How?


How much insight do you get from other minds?     Other people--people who

work in your laboratory, or people you see at conventions?      Do they spark

idea with you, or is this for you a lonely ....


     Me--I never get an idea from outside.     I want to be left alone, and

then I can get somewhere.     I never get an idea that way.   You see, many peo­

ple get ideas for work by going to meetings and listening and saying, "Oh,

he hasn't done that.    I'll do that."

     I don't care about that.     I just go my own way.   I don't say that it's

better than their's.    It's different.


It's you.


     It's different, and it takes all sorts of people to make a world, and

I'm that sort of person.     I do it that way--that's all.    I make mistakes,

made mistakes, and I'm not always right, but everybody just follows his own

way the way he is made.     There are all different ways of research, and they

may be all good.    Mine is this way.


Do you keep up on the field in reading?


     I read very little because partly I always choose problems which have

no literature.     I am a very poor reader.   I read very slowly.   If I read,
                                                                           109




I read every word, and I put it in its place, and I don't like to read.

It tires my eyes out, and those problems which have an enormous literature

which one must read are no more interesting.         Problems are interesting

which have no literature.       When I went into muscle, muscle had no litera­

ture.     Now this field of quantum, or electron bioenergetics has practically

no literature yet, so I don't read.         I just think.   I read relatively lit­

tle.     It 1 s a mistake.   I should read more, but unfortunately one cannot do

everything.      If I read a great deal, then I cannot think at the same time.


I understand.


        One just has to compromise somewhere, so I instinctively choose prob­

lems which have no literature, and those are very interesting problems.

Yes, and then it is interesting, but I should read more, and I should know

more.     I 1 m very ignorant in science.    I can feel the great lines.    For in­

stance, I haven't followed this whole DNA literature--this enormous flood

of literature.      I wouldn't touch it.     It would take all my time to go into

that.


I don't know--has there been much receptivity of the quantum mechanics in

biology, in biochemistry?


        Much influence--no.     I don't know any quantum mechanics either, real­

ly.     I just have a feel of the great ideas, but I have no idea of the de­

tail mathematics of it.        I don't need it.   For charge transfer there is a

big quantum mechanics literature.        I don't need all those equations.       I

know it gives a color if there is a charge transfer, and that's enough for

me.     I have such a great experience that I'm probably right there without
                                                                      llO




knowing much of the mathematical side.     I 1 m not a mathematical mind, and

quantum mechanics is all mathematics, so it 1 s a funny business.    I got a

big reputation in quantum mechanics, but I have not the least idea of the

quantum mechanics, of the mathematics of it, not at all, but I contribute

all the same.   One doesn't need all this big knowledge.     Of course, it's

good that not all people are like me.     There are many who work out mathe­

matics and make it a solid science.     I 1 m a biologist, not a quantum mecha­

nist, so I just need the juice of it, so to speak.


Let me put one more tape on.


[While putting on a new reel of tape, we continued to talk, and I suggested

that he comment on his co-workers in Hungary, and one in particular, a pro­

fessor of physics, P. Gombas, whom he had referred to in Muscular Contrac­

tion, p. 98, as "my faithful guide" in quantum mechanics.]


The fellow I had reference to was a physicist I think at the University of

Budapest--Gombas.


     Yes, Gombas.


You mentioned before that you didn't have to study 1 or didn't want to 1 that

it would impede your excitement to collect information solely on physics,

quantum mechanics.   I wondered what role Gombas played?

     Well, Gombas played an awful role in my life.      He almost ruined me.


Did he?


     Oh yes, he's a bad character.    Well, he was quite able in quantum
                                                                       111




mechanics.     I met him in Hungary, and he was a member of my Academy there-­

that means he lived on my grocery store, so when I came out, then I wrote

to him, "Don't you want to come out?"

       He said, "Oh yes, please, bring me out."

       There was some hesitation in him, and it cost enormous money.     I found

a position for him, a fictive position, and got all the tickets and sent

him the money.    He came to Switzerland, and then he returned to Hungary.

He said that he became ill and couldn't go.       Anyway, then later again he

said, "Please, bring me out" so I brought him out, but he is a bad charac­

ter.    You see, America was a great disappointment for him.     In that way he

thought that he was a great quantum mechanist, a great physicist.       He is

not.    He is a good one, but not a great one.    He thought the President of

America would receive him on the jetty with the American flag.       He came,

and suddenly he found that he was just simply Mr. Gombas, one of many phys­

icists here.

       In Hungary--! was the leading scientist in Hungary, and after I went

away there was room for a leading scientist.       Well, he didn't become a lead­

ing scientist, but anyway there was room to be a great scientist in Hungary-­

you know, a big fish in a little pond.     He was a great fish, or he thought

that he would be a great fish in a little pond.       He suddenly came out and

found that he was not a great fish here at all.       He was not a good charac­

ter.    Hardly arrived he started to look after a job outside my laboratory,

and I said to him, "Paul, I spent all this money on you"--about ten thousand

dollars.     "You must at least spend one or two years with me because I didn't

bring you just to get a new physicist at Pennsylvania University."

       He said, "All right."
                                                                       112




     He came to Woods Hole, and I rented him a nice house here, so he set­

tled here with his wife.    I saw that something was wrong with him.     I did­

n't know what.    He was restless.    I told him one day, "Paul, if you want

to go back to Hungary, go back.      I have no objection.   You go back, but do

me one favor.    If you want to go back, go to the State Department and say,

'I'm going back to Hungary,' and nobody will try to detain you.       That will

be that.    If you just disappear, everybody will think that you are an atom­

ic spy."

     Then there was a witch hunt for atomic spies--you know, and to bring

out from behind the curtain a physicist who suddenly disappears will leave

no doubt that he was a spy, and I put him in touch with all sorts of physi­

cists.     I introduced him to the Physics Society, so evidently I was the

head of a spy ring, if that happens, so I told him, "Paul, if you want to

go back, go back, but go to the State Department and say, 'I am going

home,' and nobody will object to it.      That will be that.   You go home."

     One day on a Friday he said, "I have to go to Boston to do some read-

ing in the library."

     I said, "All right."

     He said, "I'll be back Monday, or Tuesday."

     I said, "All right--you go."

     Monday morning I got a post card which said, "When you get this post

card, I will be already flying over the Atlantic Ocean."

     He was already on his way to Hungary.      What happened evidently was

that the communists sent out--you see, they found it very unpleasant that

all Hungarian scientists leave.      They sent out a missionary to tell him

that he will be the great leading scientist in Hungary, that he will have
                                                                     113




all he wants i f he will come back.   He's a coward.   He thought that i f he

says that he wants to go back--well, he was afraid.     That's an awful busi­

ness because he was not a spy, but you know appearances.     As with King, the

evidence was that I stole it from this Swirbely, here the evidence was that

I was the head of a spy ring, would bring out theoretical physicists, and

put them in touch with all the atomic physicists, and then they disappear

with a secret.   I telephoned to Hoover, the head of the FBI, and a big in­

vestigation came in.    I expected that maybe I would get kicked out from

this country as an undesirable alien, but fortunately it didn't happen

somehow, but that's what he did--this Gombas.

     I didn't get anything out of him really.    He was here too short to

get somewhere.   You see, I needed quantum mechanics because I don't know

the mathematics, so I must have somebody who knows the quantum mechanics

and can translate it into my language.    Since then I am working very much

together, worked very much with Professor Bay, a very outstanding physicist,

a Hungarian, who spends every summer several weeks here in my home and with

him we discuss a great deal all the physical problems, and he translates

into my baby language, so to say, the high mathematics.     That's enough for

me--my baby language.    But Gombas didn't.   I got nothing out of him.    He

was just trouble and was a dirty fellow--so, you see, i f you want to work

with Hungarians, one is exposed to all this.    Some of them are good and

nice, very good, and some of them are clever and dirty and unreliable and

would just wring your neck, just ruin you after you did everything for them

that you can.    I would never move a finger any more for a Hungarian.

     I had another one who almost busted up my group by behind my back al­

ways telling to all my associates that they must not trust me.      "He will
                                                                     114




steal all your ideas and publish them and you will be nowhere"--telling

that all the time, and you see, these boys are so nice, my boys, that they

don't try to listen.     They didn't tell me because that was squealing--you

know, and they shake off the idea but always something sticks--you see.

It is ridiculous that I should steal ideas from them!     For years he did it

until I found out.     Then I got rid of him, but I would never take a Hungar­

ian again because they are so mixed and you never know what you are buying.

They may be very good.     They may be fairly good.   Now I have a very good

Hungarian, but about half, or one third was awful.     One third was uninter­

esting, but all right, and one or two were good.


It's possible, I think, to find in Hungary itself utility in a group-­

given the University of Budapest, or the University of Szeged 1 but when

you move them to a wholly new atmosphere like Woods Hole--you know, and

throw in a little corn, feathers are bound to fly.


     You see, I had great disappointment with several, because with my

idea--you see, I had no money.     I thought that I have to bring them out be­

cause it is a good life here.     They were my associates, and I must do every­

thing for them, and they always said, "My only desire in life is to work at

your side."

     It was that sort of thing.     I brought them out with all this enormous

sacrifice and no end of money which I had to borrow from Dr. Rath, but as

soon as they were here, they found out that they could get much better sal­

aries somewhere else.     I thought, "We come out and fight together in great

poverty until we fight our way"--you see, we have no money, and I gave lit­

tle salary, because we have no money, but "we fight together until we get
                                                                     115




acknowledged, and then we'll get some money," but as soon as they were

here, they found that they could get much better salaries somewhere else,

and then they began to be arrogant, or began to work against me.     I had no

good experience with Hungarians, I'm sorry to say.

        I had one who was really good--Andrew Szent-Gyorgyi who is really good,

but he is not Hungarian.     He's a Szent-Gyorgyi--you see, he's my family,

and his brother is here too as a technician, a very poor fellow from commun­

ism who couldn't get anywhere because he could never study.     He became a

low employee somewhere, and in the revolution he came out, and I employ him

as a technician, a very nice fellow, but that's again a Szent-Gyorgyi but

those who were not Szent-Gyorgyi--most of them were just no good, so it was

a mixed proposition.     This Dr. Rath who was my Secretary and who spent enor­

mous amounts of money on me almost ruined me because he left me all these

debts and income tax--or he has ruined me.     I don't know yet--you see, but

that's Hungarian.     He gave enormous sums freely, but then in the same care­

less way he handled all of my money and left me in this trouble, so if I

would come out again, if I would start over, I wouldn't bring out Hungari­

ans, except Szent-Gyorgyies.     I would bring out as many of them as I could.


But your concern was with the laboratory.     You didn't want to be bothered

with the finances.


        No, I don't want to be bothered.


I guess--you know, in some ways I guess it's difficult not to be bothered

with the very organization that one directs--you know, but you didn't want

that.
                                                                       116




     Now it's practically no bother.     My money I get now from the National

Institutes of Health goes to the Marine Biological Laboratory in support

of my work.   That means they handle my money.    I just sign the bills--put

on them an D.K. and they pay it, so I am not troubled with finances, no re­

sponsibility, or nothing.     I don't do any accounting.     I have a splendid

secretary whom you must meet who will supply you with a list of my papers.


That whole sense of organization and finance gets in the way.


     Yes, I never bothered much about it, and that's my trouble, because

while Dr. Rath was my secretary I didn't bother.        We agreed that I would

not bother, that I would do research, and he would take care of the finan­

ces, and then when he died, suddenly I got all this disorder, all debts

and expenditures on my neck.     I have to pay it up.     I give away all I have

just to put that straight.     I have not spent much time on it.     My present

accounting is done by the Marine Biological Laboratory which is good.        Now,

it is all right.   It's fine now.    I just pray that my life would last long­

er, that I last a bit longer because I would like to finish the problems

that I have started now.

     One gets older, and one cannot help that.     My hearing gets worse.        My

hearing is getting poor.     I can't hear the very high sounds, the high fre­

quency and that distorts the words, so very often I don't understand a word

you say or anyone says.     Some word makes no sense to me--a word, because all

the high frequencies fall out, and then the word gets distorted.        That's a

common thing for elderly people, and that seems to be a family disposition.

My uncle had it too--my Szent-Gyorgyi uncle, but as this goes to pieces, I'm

afraid that my brain will go to pieces someday.     That's natural that it goes
                                                                        117




to pieces, but I would like to finish all what I have started, these present

problems, before I either die, or my brain goes to pieces which it may do.


Do you have a sense that what you have begun can be completed, or are you

really in an open ended sort of thing which changes and alters with varia­

bles all the time?


      I am sure that it can be completed, if I get the time to do it, and

if I get the money too.     I have a grant for one more year, but then I must

get a new grant.     Now they may refuse a new grant--just say, "Old people

should retire."

      I 1 m long overdue to retire.    I 1 m seventy-four, and I could understand

it if they said, "We'd rather give the money to young people."

      Only that would leave me not even with a livelihood because all my

money I had I had to give away for my Institute, and suddenly I would have

nothing.     I live on my own grant.    I am not worried about it.   It may hap­

pen, but I just wish I could finish off this work, finish what I am doing

now because it is very promising, an entirely new door opening up in bio­

chemistry.    That's how it stands.

      Nobody knows what the future will be.


No.


      And certainly with the Viet Nam war--all the money goes there.          They

will be short of money at NIH, and they will say, "There is not enough mon­

ey, and we'd rather give it to young people."

      That I could understand.    It's an expensive thing--you know.     Things

are expensive.     I have a grant of about one hundred and fifty thousand
                                                                         118




dollars a year which is an enormous sum of money, but I need it.         Even with

a smaller group I need it.     I have to buy enormous new machines, and life

is expensive.     But I don't worry.    I just go on, and then we'll see what

happens.     I have learned that in life.


It's going to come isn't it--whatever.


        And it's funny thinking back--you know, if one is a real research man

which I think I am, a full blooded research man, anything that happens pro­

motes your research.     Under Hitler when I had only a few months to work and

then everything would be out, then I thought, "I must work double hard to

get there," and then if I have plenty of time, I think, "I must really work

now.     I have all the prospects at my disposal," so whatever happens, one

just goes on working and working hard.       That 1 s my life.   It's difficult to

say.    There are things, of course, which smash you up, like your wife's

death in the most awful way.     That doesn 1 t promote work, but otherwise if

I feel that I have only one more year to go, then I will work double hard,

and that will speed up my work.        If I know that I have ten more years, then

I will work still harder.     Whatever, you'll work because that 1 s how one is

made.     Of course, all these financial worries--what shall I do with the tax

inspector and collector--that doesn't help you.        That takes away thoughts

and is bothering.     The best condition is when you are entirely careless

with no worries.     Then one can sleep well, and ideas just come by them­

selves, but if one has lots of worries still that undermines you a little

bit.     Other people would have died, and I should be dead ten times over and

should have given up ten times all this research, but I just didn't somehow

or other--it 1 s just being made that way.
                                                                          119




From 1925 to the present, you've seen enormous chan_ges in laboratory equip­

ment too.


     Oh yes, enormous--completely changed.      Completely changed--all the

methods.     All the methods which I have learned as a young man don't exist

any more practically, but I use always the simplest method myself, very

simple methods, but of course I must have all the machinery and the people

who run it, but I don't work with them.      Now and then I need that for de­

tail, infrared spectrum, for example, so I need a good infrared spectro­

scope.     I have that, but I don 1 t know how to handle it.   My assistant knows

how to handle it.     I do little, simple things which lead my thoughts and

give me new ideas.     Electron spin resonance machine I have which has about

two hundred buttons on it, and if I would have to know all those buttons,

I would be able to do nothing else.


Become a technician instead of a thinker.


     Yes.     I must have somebody who runs that machine.      There is somebody,

and today he did an experiment for me.      I don't use it much now, but the

techniques in the laboratory have completely changed--the chromatographic

techniques are entirely new, opened up entirely new possibilities.


Have you found them helpful to you in your work?


     I didn't use them much, but my associate uses them.         It 1 s the only

method to do.     It's the only method where you can really isolate something,

but I don't use it.     I 1 m engaged now in electronics to see the meaning of

this reaction.     They work out the constitution, isolation, whatnot.
                                                                     120




Do you have a daily meeting in the laboratory, or no?


     Meeting?


Meet with your associates.


     No, I have only one real associate, one advanced associate, and we

work side by side, and we talk all the time, so there is no point.     Some

time back we had seminars every fortnight, or every week, but there is no

point to doing that.   We talk it over all the time.    I am there all the

time, and we just exchange ideas all the time.

     Let me see about dinner.
                                                                    121




Penzance Point, Thursday, June 22 1 1967.




Earlier this noon, you gave some thoughts on education.


     Yes.


I didn 1 t have the machine on at the time.   We were just speculating, but

this was 1932 1 and the Commissioner of Education had invited you back, and

you had some thoughts about bright minds, how to find them, what to do with

the old curriculum and what made sense in terms of the needs of the nation

for bright minds that make the leaps, the changes that alter direction.       I

wondered if you would talk about that briefly.


     To repeat what we talked about before?


Yes, this noon.


     It's simply my idea that the very outstanding minds are so very much

more useful than the somewhat outstanding, so real progress in science de­

pends on the real outstanding minds.    The whole great progress of mankind

is due to a very small number of really outstanding minds, so to find those

minds is the question.   There is a popular belief that "the ingenious fights

his way" which is entirely wrong.    I think there is nothing easier than to

damage an ingenious and discourage him because ingenious is an unstable

mind, some instability, so it is very easy to squash and ruin an ingenious

so if there are any, it's important for a nation to find them and to give

them a chance to develop.

     After the war in that short democratic period, I accepted the chair­

manship of our National Council of Education with two ideas.     One was to
                                                                        122




see to it that the many gifted people who are born in Hungary shouldn't

get lost for mankind and for the nation especially.     I am convinced that

an ingenious is nothing mysterious.     It is not some mystery.   It's just a

good brain which has its signs which you can read, and I quoted the example

of a friend of mine who is a leading sculptor who when I asked him said

that he was always carving under the bench at school, and I am sure if the

teacher had noticed it, he would have been punished for it, and he would

never have started to carve again, so my idea was to teach the teachers how

to find the ingenious.   Even I could have developed a method that every

teacher had to study his whole class with certain tricks, certain methods

which would reveal an ingenious.   You see, for instance, a musical ingeni­

ous would reveal himself first of all in absolute pitch.     Without absolute

pitch you cannot be a great musician.     A mathematical ingenious would re­

veal himself in the ease of handling numbers, equations, and whatnot which

can be tested very simply.   My idea was to teach the teachers how to find

the very outstanding brains which are nothing mysterious.     It is just--well,

you can diagnose it, so to say.    As you can diagnose a disease, you can di­

agnose an ingenious if you know how to.     That was one of my ideas.

     The other idea was to give sense to education and teaching.        The Hun­

garian methods were awful.   First we spent too much time on Latin and Greek

which was a complete waste in my idea.     We spent almost two hours a day of

five hours of teaching on Latin and Greek every day which is a complete

waste.   Second the teaching was all memorizing, and I wanted to reform

that--to develop the mind, not just memorizing.     Teaching even in this

country still in many schools is just memorizing books, and how senseless

that was--well, I had a very good example of it.     The potato has two names
                                                                       123




in Hungary, a sophisticated name and a popular name.     The sister of my

second wife--she was a very good, outstanding pupil at school.     She knew

all about the potato, but never knew that it was the same stuff that she

was eating every day because she ate under a different name.     The whole

teaching in Hungary was senseless.     It didn't appeal to the mind.    It was

just memorizing, and memorizing history.

     In my mind, history is one of the most important subjects to be taught,

but it has to be a correct history.     In my mind history is the story of how

man developed from his animal status to his present elevation and what

brought him there.     There are two forces, the building forces and the de­

stroying forces, and history as taught was almost exclusively the destroy­

ing forces, only the heroes who won battles, who made wars, and who killed

people.   The glory of a historical figure is proportionate to the number

of people he killed.     The more he killed the more glorious he is, but Dar­

win and Newton--they are not historical figures.     They never figured in any

of my history books.     They figure in zoology and in physics, but they are

historical figures.     They were the great movers of mankind and so forth,

all the people who found the new ethical values and developed new ideas.

These are not the Kings and Barons who made wars and signed peace in some

village so that the students had to learn the name of the village where the

peace treaty was signed and the year, which is all nonsense and the dirty,

dreary side of mankind.     That was what history was.   History should be the

story of how man developed and who were the people who led mankind to new

knowledge because that inculcates the new ideas, new scale of values into

young people--you see, so I wanted to reform the whole of teaching, but the

time was too short and the resistance was too strong.      My time was short
                                                                     124




because communism took over, and I had to go out, of course.


One of the themes of your thinking was the fact that Nature itself is not

democratic.   Therefore, it requires a different education.


     Yes, Nature is not democratic.    Some of us are dumb, and some of us

are clever, so we are not equals.     We are very far from being equals, and

thank heaven, we are not equals, but even the dumb has his right to happi­

ness and to a decent living.     He can have a decent living, but as far as

education is concerned, democracy consists in giving everybody an equal

chance to develop his ability to the maximum, and a great ability demands

a quite different education than a low ability.     Nature is not democratic.

We must support Nature in not being democratic, but the tendency is always

to make Nature democratic and beat down the outstanding to the lowest com­

mon denominator which is an awful waste--awful.


Terrible.


     Terrible--yes, so those were my educational ideas, and the chief thing

is the development of the mind and not of the memory, and knowledge--there

was a wrong idea about books.     A book is something that you have to press

into your mind, and I had the opposite idea.     A book is something to keep

the knowledge in and use your mind for something better--for association

and developing new ideas.   A book is a nice place to keep the data.       That's

why the book is there.   You don't have to keep the data in your head, so I

had just the opposite idea from what was current and is still in this coun­

try current to a great extent.     Now it is changing very slowly, but I had

all these revolutionary ideas then, but I didn't get very far with them.
                                                                        125




It's a very interesting proposition.     Education is the most important prob­

lem of mankind because tomorrow will be as we educate today.        As we teach

those boys today, so they will be tomorrow.      I have one little piece on

teaching.     Did I give it to you?




      I have one little article on teaching, on the expanding knowledge and

teaching.     How we can cope with it.   Didn't I give it to you?


No.


      If you'll give me a moment.     If you will stop that machine I will get

it for you.     It might be of use to read it.


Is this a recent one?


      Yes.    You can read that any time, tonight, or tomorrow.     It's quite

short.   It was a panel at Brown University--a centennial at Brown Univer­

sity, and I was asked to speak there.      It is a very interesting problem-­

teaching.     Countries don't give it enough attention.     The difficulty is

who should teach whom.     Who should teach the teachers?     I mean old people

teach the teachers.     How shall we change over to the new age?     You see,

that's the difficulty.     Everything perpetuates itself.     Old people teach

the young ones, and so it goes on, but after the scientific revolution we

have had, everything would have to be changed.


There are vested rights of all kinds that stand in the way.


      Oh yes--that 1 s always true.   There are in my country--the big figures
                                                                     126




of education were all students of Latin and Greek, so they wanted Latin

and Greek to be the first, the most important, and if Latin and Greek goes

out as a subject in school, they are nobody, so they would fight for it.

My theory in life in my experience is that what moves things is all the

vested interests--never philosophy.    What we talk about to justify our

ideas is all bunk, is all lies.    The brain--if I want something, the pri­

mary and importa~t thing is that I want it, and my brain will immediately

supply all the logic for it which is bunk.     The only real thing is that I

want that thing.    This is like a burglar--if I want somebody else's money

and break into somebody else's house, I want his money, but then I will

never say to myself, "I am a scoundrel."

     Rather I will make certain theories that rich people are bad that they

have that much money, that sort of thing--you see, so if Johnson says "I

have stopped communism", what he really wants is to keep his seven millions,

or whatever he has, and to be reelected, and all he talks about is princi­

ples, but it is just bunk.    He doesn't know i~.   You see, a scoundrel does

wrong things, but he never says, "I am a scoundrel.     Thus I do that."

     He will always supply--his brain will supply all the arguments for

what he is doing.


To sustain him--yes.


     So we are just made that way--that 1 s all, so everything is led really

by vested interests.    That's always the whole history--if you look at his­

tory which develops always with revolutions.     You have a feudal system.

Mankind has a certain philosophy, or certain parameters, or certain neces­

sities and creates a system, and then conditions change.     The philosophy
                                                                      127




changes, and the system is outdated, but it is there, and it fights for its

existence to the last minute, until a revolution wipes it away with much

sacrificing and with much destruction and all that--like the French Revolu­

tion--you see.     The feudal system was a good system in its day, but then it

outlived itself.     It was done.   The philosophy of mankind changed, but there

was the King with all his soldiers, generals, barons, and dukes who all

wanted to keep their power.     Then comes a new group whose interest is to

throw them out.     They fight, and they create destruction, behead thousands

of people, torture thousands of people and whatnot, and destroy so much,

and then comes a new form, but always there is the vested interest in every­

thing.


They stand in the way.


       Even old Planck who discovered the quantum, the greatest revolution­

ary.     He wrote his own biography, and he couldn't get his ideas through

which today is the foundation of science, quantum, but he wasn't accepted

at all in his lifetime.     He writes in his autobiography that you can con­

vince nobody of nothing.     You must give time to people to die, and the young

people will take it up without any objection.      You can't convince nobody of

nothing because my convictions--they are all linked up with their vested

interest.


Right.


       My vested interest is science.    If I say science is important, it may

be bunk, but I say it because I am a scientist, and I want to go on working,

and for me, it is important, so I say society should support science, but
                                                                     128




maybe I am saying it only because I am a scientist.     Everybody is the same

way, so that's my philosophy of life, of social relations, that everybody

is interested only in himself and only in his vested interest and all what

he talks is bunk.   The primary thing is your desire--you want something,

or you don't want something.    All the ideas you make--that 1 s just to support

your desire and your action.   That's what I am very much convinced of.


It would appear that while you've been through a period of great tumult,

that's all we have really to look forward to, endless tumult, the clash

of vested interests.


     Yes.    Now the great danger of America is that we have the Pentagon.

They all want careers and want to be super-generals, but you can't be with­

out a war.    If there is no war--you see, all this tension with Russia is

created by the army and the armament industry because if there is no ten­

sion, then we don't need the army.    We must have hatred, so they created

hatred, and one gets a funny idea because the Russian Army is against the

American Army, but really they are allies.     Without the Russian Army we

wouldn't need an American Army, and the generals--we have seven hundred,

or a thousand seven hundred generals who all want to be paid and make ad­

vances, and without the Russian Army, they couldn't, so really, they are

the sweetest allies, only they shout against one another to get all the mon­

ey of the nation.    They would want the whole nation to produce only arma­

ments and only generals, and only Pentagons.     "Build another Pentagon and

make it bigger,"    and they dig out a mountain in Denver and make an enor­

mous, big hotel inside the mountain for all these generals and a big center,

but if there would be no Russian Army, we wouldn't need all that.
                                                                       129




        It's all vested interests.   It's all lies.   It's very discouraging in

life to find that in life nothing is true.      The only thing that is true is

vested interest, and all this political tension is bunk.       People want peace

and decency, and they want good will.      American people are good people.

They don't want to hate.     They don't want to kill, but we have to because

otherwise generals would have nothing to do.      They have the power and the

whole influence, and they feed Johnson on phony information, saying send

ten thousand more soldiers, and we win the war.       That happened already, and

it went up to a hundred thousand and then two hundred thousand.       They say,

"A hundred thousand, and we win the war" and again a hundred thousand.        Now

we have up to four hundred thousand, and now they talk about two hundred

thousand more and they say again two hundred thousand more.       What is that?

Just phony information to support your vested interest, and Johnson swal­

lows it because his vested interest is in a victory which would make him

reelected as President.     It's a bit discouraging to see it, but I think

that's how it is.


I understand your desire for a guiet bench at the Marine Biological Labora­

tory.


        Maybe what I do promotes mankind, but sometimes it's difficult to keep

your line in this tumultuous world--you see, we have now more atomic bombs

than is needed to kill all mankind in one blow, and they want to have dou­

ble as much because it's good for industry, good for the bosses to fill

their pockets and so we must have more hatred and more fear and all that.

It's all a lie.

        That's how I see it, but I'm trying to get out of that.    Until now the
                                                                       130




great trouble of my life was that I could not--I always thought that I had

to stick up for my ideals, and I risked my life a hundred times under Hit­

ler because I hated that whole idea of what he represented.     If I had com­

promised in myself, I could have had a quiet life and could have been, if

I wanted to, President of Hungary, Governor of Hungary, or I don't know

what else I could have been, but even now I can't keep my mouth shut.        I

can't stand this senseless killing in Viet Nam--all these good, young Amer­

icans being killed for nonsense, for bunk, for phony ideas.     It's no idea

at all--just phony stuff.     I just can't stand it, but now I am getting out

of it.    I am getting away from those thoughts, but I gave too much thought

to it.

       I was the first to attack Johnson after he started the war, in an open

letter to the New York Times.     I can show it to you--a very good, short let­

ter in which I accused him of betraying us because I just can't stand this

lying, this phony business, killing, and destroying the good people like

the Viet Namese people, good, brave people.     That makes life agitated, but

one is made that way, so that's that.     I couldn't be made that way, that I

say I want peace and that's all.     I don't bother with that killing--let any­

body kill anybody that wants to kill anybody.     That's not my business.        I

was not made that way.


It's hard to be in the world and not be part of it, whatever is going on.


       Yes, but most people are not part of it--not giving real thought to

it.    That made life difficult for me, but it made it colorful and interest­

ing.     I somehow got through life until here--you know, until now.
                                                                   131




It was kind of difficult for you to imply by silence that you would go

along with this any more than you would the book burnings.


     Yes, quite.   There is a very fine Hungarian poem, a big, long poem,

in which the prophet says that he who keeps silent among brigands is a

brigand himself.   If you are under brigands and keep silent, then you are

a brigand, and that's correct.

     Dinner is ready.   Well, let's go.
                                                                      132




Penzance Point, Monday, September 11, 1967.



        Before you sta~t that, what are we going to talk about?


There were two funny, illustrative stories you told me last time off the

tape.


        Which?


One of them had to deal with the interest in you for a position at Harvard

University.      That was hilarious.   Do you remember it?


        Yes.


When you went up for an interview and how it all came out?


        Yes.


That's the one I would like you to put down here.


        Well, I can tell you that when Professor Falin, Professor of Biochem­

istry at the Harvard University, died, they considered me as his successor,

but I lived then in Hungary.      Harvard is very careful about selecting peo­

ple.     They wanted to have a look at me first, so they invited me to be a

visiting professor for three months, and I knew right away that Professor

Edwin Cohn would be the judge of my intelligence.       I did not sympathize

very much with Professor Cohn--! had no objection to him, but his work

seemed to be very dull to me, and the way he talked from behind his nose

somewhere--funny noises came out from behind his nose which I couldn't

stand very well, but all the same, I was good friends with him.       When the
                                                                     133




day of decision came, they gave me a big dinner.     I knew that the festival

occasion of this dinner was the decision, and at the dinner I had wine and

good food, lots of it.   After the dinner, Professor Cohn took me up to his

laboratory to test my intelligence, and he set me in a big easy chair and

began to talk about his own research which was very dull and uninteresting.

He wanted to see my reaction, whether it was an intelligent reaction, and

my reaction was that I fell asleep.

     When I woke up, I knew that I would never be a Harvard Professor.


That's a marvelous story.


     This is true--every word of it is true.


It's illustrative too--when things are uninteresting.     There was another

call to you from Evanston--Northwestern.


     This is not so humorous.    They were awfully nice to me, and they

wanted to make me professor of something, and they promised anything.        I

mean they gave me a perfectly free hand.     They were so very nice that I

just didn't want to hurt them.     I thought that I would ask things which

they could never grant, but they granted everything, and in the end they

got me in a corner, so I had to say that I would come if they replaced the

Lake o_f Michigan with the sea because I was married to the sea.    They ex­

cused themselves, said that they couldn't do that, and that ended the story.

They were awfully kind, awfully nice, and I will always be grateful to them

for their great generosity.     They were willing to give anything to me--spe­

cial pension fund, extension of retirement age, no teaching, whatever I

wanted, but I am married to the sea, and I just couldn't exchange it for
                                                                       134




Lake Michigan.     That was all, and I didn't want to be professor.


Did not want to be?


       For several reasons.   First I have built up so many times in my life

a school and pupils, and always it collapsed, so I got discouraged--! don't

want to build up anything any more.      I just want to do research and leave

something behind in research.      I didn't want to be professor and spend much

time in teaching, faculty meetings, and building up a university.       I just

wanted to do research, and though life is somewhat hard here in many ways-­

my salary is very modest.     My Institute had very little money, and I had

to tell myself what my salary was, and I made the minimum, but all the same,

I think I made a wise choice not to leave Woods Hole because I could work

here very quietly.


The story does illustrate the ties that Woods Hole and this area have on

you.    If they would have moved Woods Hole and the Dcean--fine.


       Yes.   This is a very lovely place.   It's a funny place--it 1 s heaven,

or hell.      Heaven, if you have good company, if you are happily married--you

see, because the winter is very lonely.      You have the laboratory, so you

have work, and if you are happily married, then outside the work you are

fine, but if you are left alone suddenly as I was after the death of my

wife, then it's just hell!      You are quite alone during the winter, and it 1 s

stormy outside and dark.      I have this big house, and you come home tired

from work, and there's nobody here to say a word to, or you cook your own

meals and just swallow it and get an awful tummy ache because you have swal­

lowed it down in half a minute--it 1 s just a hell of a life!     I had that for
                                                                         135




quite some time after the death of my wife.

       Well, you wanted to talk about women.


This is the theme--the female influence in a researcher's life.


       This is a very touchy and very difficult problem--it 1 s very difficult

with women, but impossible without them.       That 1 s the situation.   I think

that man is not a viable unit alone.       Nature has made it so that a viable

unit is a man and a woman, and that makes one unit, and alone neither of

them is really viable, but the union is very touchy and very dangerous.            A

woman can break your neck even without wanting to do so and just can ruin

you.     I have seen several such cases.    One of the most outstanding colleagues

I know was ruined by his wife who just wanted him to do a lot of work to earn

money and money and money, and he was one of the most gifted fellows I knew,

and he was entirely ruined by his wife.       If there's no harmony, of course,

then life is very difficult, and my experience is that what promotes work

and thought most is happiness.     Happiness means a completely balanced state-­

peace.     It's really difficult to define what happiness is, but it means a

certain balanced state, peace of mind.       Life doesn't hurt any place, and

for that two people must fit together very well.

       What makes it difficult on top of that is that you change in time, and

what may fit when you are twenty-five years old may not fit when you are

forty-five, and one cannot help changing all the time.        My experience is

that what is best for work is happiness and a balanced state, and if I am

happy and have a woman in my arms, then thoughts just flow from my mind,

one thought after the other, which are good thoughts, and if I am unhappy,

or miserable, then just nothing comes.       You sit down and make every effort
                                                                     136




to produce something, but nothing comes of it.

     I myself have a very mixed record on that account.     I married very

young the first time, and I was a bit romantic--especially that muscular

romanticism.   I liked skiing and all _these exciting enterprises--mountains,

swimming, and all the sporting things, like camping out.     I loved Nature

always, and I had a very good companion who was a bit masculine, liked

these sorts of things.   Women are very different--a really femalish woman

would not have done for me then because I had this great urge to go out and

have an intense physical life--enjoy Nature.     After the First World War I

lost everything, and I had to live in great poverty, so I had to have a

very good companion, and my wife was very good at that.     I was always in

the first decade very poor--a poor assistant in Europe, they are very poor,

but always I was among the richest people and the best society just because

somehow my taste--! didn't search for the higher level of society, but some­

how--my wife was pretty and chic, and though we were very poor, we had a

very interesting life, and my rich friends always envied me for my very

gay and happy life.

     Then later we changed both, and I was beginning to look more for the

more quiet female type, and she drifted to the other side--she became more

and more masculine until it ended up in a very serious hormonal disturbance.

She became completely masculine, dropped me out of her whole life, sentimen­

tal life, had affairs with girls, and I don't know what until our marriage

went to pieces with a great deal of misery--a very great deal of misery.

     We lived twenty years together.   That's an enormously strong link which

cannot be broken without very much pain, so for many years I think that dam­

aged my work very much--you see, I have a funny record in science.     I missed
                                                                     137




the greatest discoveries which have been made in my lifetime just by an

inch.     I had it almost--practically almost all of them, and if I had had

a real happy life, I think I would have made all of them--you see.     Really,

I had penicillin all mapped out in my mind.     Adrenal secretion was then one

of the great problems, and the oxidation cycle which is the very foundation

of biochemistry--! had it right in hand really, and just the last inch--I

made some of it, but the last inch of it I missed.

        Then my second marriage--that was a wonderful woman, and I just loved

 her, very, very dearly, but that was also a bittersweet affair because she

came from the south of Hungary where the family makes a very strong unit.

She belonged very much to her own family, and I didn't like the family very

much and they were people who were very religious and wanted their will,

 and my wife--you see, this was my wife's second marriage, and the family

 opposed this marriage and did everything to ruin it.    They interfered all

 the time.    After the Hungarian revolution they all came on my neck here and

made it very difficult.     I loved my wife very dearly--she was a really won­

 derful woman, a splendid woman--but the happiness wasn't quite perfect.

She had two children from the first marriage, and the family used those

. children--she was such a good mother, she couldn't live without the chil­

 dren, and the family said, "You must give up the children if you don't give

 up the man," and so all the time they made this trouble which made it very

 unhappy.

        We lived together twenty years, and in the end it broke down through

 the illness of my wife who suffered, and I suffered with her just as much

 as she did, with cancer.    The bad thing about cancer, especially if you are

 a famous man's wife, is that the doctors don't let you die in peace and
                                                                     138




decency.   They prolong it, and they cut you to pieces just to prolong life.

My wife was from the south of Hungary, and she had some Yugoslavian blood

in herself.    The Yugoslavs are very brave people--they are not afraid of

death at all, and when my wife knew that she had cancer, she asked me to

help her to commit suicide which I couldn't do.     She was a marvelous woman.

She said, "Help me to die because once I am over a certain point, I know

that I will stick to life.    I will do everything to stay alive when I am

over a certain point of weakness."

     That is what she did.    It was just an agony to live at her side because

I loved her so much.    I really admired her.   She died, and that left me sud­

denly and completely alone and broken.

     Now, when you are left alone suddenly, and you have a bit of fame and

people think that you are rich, which I am not, then all scheming women come

along and mess up your life, and eventually last year I gave a lecture at

Temple University, and I met a girl I thought was very nice.     We got super­

ficially acquainted.    Then she came and visited me here a few times--! met

her two years ago--and then in the fall she finally said that she was mov­

ing into my house.     I was so lonely and miserable that I was not in a posi­

tion to say, "No, I don't want it."

     She was a very nice, a pretty girl, a young girl, and especially when

one gets older, one is more sensitive--one likes youth because one needs

youth, if one gets old, and it 1 s a wrong idea to have old people around when

you are old.    When you are old, then you need youth around you to keep young

and keep active, and so I couldn't say, "No," and she being a colleague's

daughter--! couldn't let her live here as my mistress, so I offered marriage

which she accepted, but as soon as--well, we lived happily for two or three
                                                                     139




months.    I took her on great travels.   I wanted her to see everything that

I thought was the most beautiful that I knew.     I took her for a sailing trip

in the Caribbean.    I took her out to Mexico.   I took her to Arizona for some

horse riding, and for two months it went all right, and then suddenly she

turned, and she followed that trail of many American girls--just to get some­

body, get· married, and then turn against him.   She became so utterly nasty-­

she was, I think, not quite sane in her mind, but she was utterly nasty, and

I have the trend to always look for the mistake in myself--what 1 s wrong in

me that things go wrong, so I really struggled terribly for a few months,

but she became so utterly nasty in the end that I should have kicked her out,

which I did not, so the only thing left to her was to run away.     She ran away,

and now for a year or so, she is away and I do not even know her address.

     The only thing--! only know that she is alive.     I heard that she is

alive.    The last summer, or spring, the only sign of life was that she went

to Abercrombie and Fitch in New York which is a very expensive shop where

I have a charge account and bought clothes for several hundred dollars.

That was the only sign of life that I had from her.     Otherwise I did not

even know her address, but I think this is the scheme here in America--to

get married, get divorced, and you receive alimony and you need not work,

you have a carefree life, and the judge always judges in favor of the girl.


Always.


     Always and in the most scandalous way, and even if the girl is just

a crook, even then the judge will favor the girl, so this is an American

scheme to get married, pick an elderly man who is well situated and then

turn against him--get married, get divorced, and then have no more worries
                                                                         140




in life.     Well, it didn't quite come off as she expected because I said

that she abandoned me, so that's that.        I 1 m still married at the moment-­

legally married, and she can still do awful nasty things to me, if she

wants to, and probably she will because in such cases these girls usually

get in touch with a lawyer who shares the profits, who takes up the case

without honorarium just to share the profits.        I already knew she has done

this which I told to my lawyer, and my lawyer said, "That's a nasty one.

That is what I would have advised her if she would be my client."

     So you see, I'm still--this made life quite difficult for me and es­

pecially then the tax business which I told you--! paid over fifty thou­

sand dollars, my last penny, and the house that I kept for my old age I

had to give away to pay off the tax collector which was just unfair--it

was a daylight robbery--and I still owe the National Health Institute

twenty-seven thousand dollars which I cannot pay.        I haven't got a penny

any more.     I told you the story probably; that my secretary died and sud­

denly I had to look into the finances of my Institute, and I couldn't find

the bills.     I don't know what happened.     What happened I don't know, but

I couldn't account for thirty-seven thousand dollars to the NIH, I gave

them the    $10,DO □   I had myself, private money, but I said with good con­

science, "I will pay it back from my own.        Don't worry.   I will pay you

twenty-five hundred dollars every year at least," and I had the money, but

instead the tax collector took away fifty thousand dollars from me just be­

cause--well, as a punishment because I gave about sixty thousand dollars

as a present to science, and the tax collector said, "You had the right to

revoke, so it was your private income and not a donation, so you owe us"--

then he said--"thirty thousand dollars."
                                                                            141




        I already had to pay taxes earlier over thirty-five thousand dollars,

so all my money to the last penny, and I still owe NIH.           If the National

Institutes wants, they can take my neck, but they seem to be very nice, and

they don't bother me which I am glad because I told them what the situation



        That is my story, my female story.     Now I have a wonderful, little per­

son in my house--a little Hungarian girl.        They're two girls in this house.

The one came out--well, two years ago I had a letter, a desperate letter,

saying, "We want to learn, but being middle class we have no chance to get

into any institution.     We can only have menial work, and we want to learn.

Will you please help us?"

        They thought that they were relatives of mine.         I don't think they are,

but they thought so.     Anyway, I said to the older one that I could get her

into a university with my influence in Hungary--! still have some influence

there--"but I cannot do it without knowing you.          I know nothing about you."

        I was just in London, so I wrote to her, "Come to London"--! sent her

the money and the ticket.     "I will meet you, and then I can speak up for

you."

        She came to London, and I went to    Lond □ n--this   is the older girl here-­

but I had no time.     Every minute was taken.      Then I had to go to Paris for

a lecture, and after that to Greece.        I couldn't postpone my departure, so

I said, "Go to America and wait for me there until I come home, and then

we will see what happens."

        Then, of course, i f somebody is here, it's very difficult to send

somebody back again.     To send somebody to misery after she has seen the

good life is cruelty, and I couldn't do it, and since I was alone here--
                                                                       142




there is nothing, any intimacy between us--she just stayed here.       Of course

it was not easy with the Immigration Office.       I applied for a permanent re­

sidency for her, and it was refused--very rudely refused, and what saved

the situation was that I stuck out my neck for Senator Brooke and his elec­

tion.     He had the idea that he owed his election to me, that if I hadn't

stuck out my neck for him, he would not have been elected, and he wondered

whether he could do something for me, and I said, "Yes, arrange the visa

for this girl."

        He did so.   I sent this older girl to college, and in a few days' time

she is leaving for college.     The younger girl--she wrote when she was left

behind, "Now, take care of me."

        Well, the older one I brought out just without any selfish idea--I

thought, "Oh, hell!      I have the money and let somebody be very happy.    I

don't need the money."

        I wrote to the younger one too.   I knew my wife would be leaving, and

I wrote to the younger one, "Come here and take care of me.       It's beautiful

here, and you can work in the laboratory and learn, and maybe I'll send you

to college."

        She came and looks after me beautifully.    Well, that's how I live at

the moment.     She's very nice--you see, in Hungary, intellectual, creative

work stands very high especially in many people's minds, and to this little

girl, I was a demigod who had a Nobel Prize, stuck up against Hitler--! was

for a time a national hero in Hungary, and she wanted to sacrifice herself,

"I will come and look after you.      I ask for nothing at all--just to be al­

lowed to look after you," and she has sacrificed her life which you would

never find, or have very little chance of finding in an American girl, but,
                                                                         143




you see, in Hungary that is not so extraordinary, that a young girl will

say, "I will give my life to save some intellectual because my life is

nothing."

     I had here last year as a visitor Z. Kodalyi, a great Hungarian com­

poser, one of the greatest.     He just died this spring, and he was one of

the greatest living musicians, and he had a similar experience.        He had

married a very young girl, one of twenty years old--he was eighty, or some­

thing, and he married a young girl of twenty, a girl who said,    11   ! will die

for you--live for you and die for you because you are a great musician."

     That's Hungarian, and that's the situation.     I am living very happily,

not alone in this house.    I have youth here--you have seen the two little

girls, and they are nice.


They're marvelous.


     They do the cooking, laugh all day long and think that this life is

just wonderful, that this house is wonderful, and if we go once every fort­

night shopping, and they can go into a big supermarket and choose whatever

they want, they have the greatest time, and for an American girl, that's

all nothing.   For these, just to buy things--! mean just to buy a few

things is a great experience.     In Hungary they could look at it, but never

buy it.


It lends excitement, doesn't it.


     So I am living now, and I just wish it would last.     My work is going

wonderfully now and with great perspective.


Really?
                                                                         144




      Yes, it's getting wider and wider by the day.       It 1 s very beautiful.

I never look at what I am working on really, but I 1 m always looking behind

it--what is the great principle behind it.       That's what I am really inter­

ested in--not what this substance is, or that substance, but what are the

great principles on which life is built, and what is life actually.            Now

my work more and more points to the fact which is to me already a fact,

that the living cell is actually a very involved electrical gadget.            I

think it was Faraday--Michael Faraday who said, "If you ask a chemist to

find out what a dynamo is, what he will do is to dissolve it in hydrochlor-

ic acid. 11

      That's the first thing he will do, dissolve it, and he will tell you

that it is just so much iron and so much copper--that 1 s what a dynamo is.

That is about what we have done    1 til   now--biochemists, and even if somebody

studies the structure of the dynamo very carefully, he'll never find out

what it is if he doesn't know about electricity.        I begin to see very clear­

ly that the living cell is actually a very involved electrical machine.               My

first paper went already to the Proceedings of the National Academy.               It's

getting wider and wider--really the great basic principles of life are be­

ginning to open up before me.     Of course what I am doing with my hands is

always something very simple, but what it leads to is very beautiful now,

and that is, I think, due to Csilla, to a great extent, because I have no

worries now.    I have food.   I get company with which I can eat my food, so

that it does not upset my stomach, and so this is my present situation.


Is this electronic thing an extension from ''Bioenergetics 11 and "Submolecu­

lar Biology"?
                                                                        145




     It's somewhat connected.     If I ·hadn't done that study, I could never

do this, but this is the furthest, really the realization of those dreams

I had then.


That's exciting.


     It's really exciting now, very beautiful, and naturally I have an old

personal grudge against cancer, and I hope that when I know these things I

will understand cancer better, and if you understand it, then you can put

it straight.     Then only you have a chance to put it straight, do something

about it, when you know how Nature does it.      I think there is--well, cancer

research has looked in the wrong direction.      They always ask why does a can­

cer grow?     That's not the problem.   The problem is why does a normal cell

not grow--you see, because growth is a basic property of life.         Anything

alive wants to grow and grow and multiply, so if a cell multiplies, it's

natural.    That's a basic characteristic of life.    So it is made.    Every

tree which has a flower, has millions of seeds, and a tree could supply the

seed for a big forest, or for the whole world, so life is enormously abun­

dant, overabundant, wants to grow and grow and grow, so that's not the prob­

lem--why cancer grows.     The problem is when the cells grow together into a

complex organism like yours, or mine, how does the cell stop growing because

they are not allowed to grow, and that 1 s very interesting.    That's a prob­

lem, but that you can find out only by studying and knowing the normal-­

what are the basic principles of activity, rest, and I can see now that's

probably a question of electronic pressure--that sort of thing which I will

very soon be able to put down in quite exact, factual terms.


That's great.
                                                                      146




     That's what I am doing, and now things are going well that I am well

balanced again.


When I saw you before, you were on your way to Paris to deliver a paper

on Retina •...


     Yes, that was the first beginnings of that.      That was very interest­

ing, and I had the occasion to discuss my problem with the greatest physi­

cist, one of the greatest physicists who especially worked on that line,

                 who was the last Nobel Prize winner in physics, and he said,

"Forget about it.     It 1 s all impossible because it's all very improbable."

     It's very funny.     If I had been young, I would have become discouraged

with what he said, but being old, it just opens it up for me because Nature

can work only with improbable processes, because probable processes would

run down by themselves--you see.     If a reaction goes by itself--what the

physicist calls a probable process--then it can't be used by the body.         It

can only use improbable reactions which are made to react by some enzyme,

so while he thought to discourage me completely, he encouraged me enormous­

ly, and I profited very much in Paris.     It was really worth going to Paris.


You look at the world generally, politically, socially, and otherwise, and

if you have an idea that is probable, forget it, because only the improba­

ble will work probably.


     Yes, somebody said that what everybody believes is very probably wrong

just because of the fact that everybody believes it.      When one gets old,

one gets these funny ideas and makes funny conclusions, so that was the be­

ginning of this work, and I didn't expect any reaction to it, very mixed
                                                                   147




from all branches of science, but soon I will go to Denver to discuss this

with some very select people.   In Denver, Colorado, there will be a meeting,

the leading physicists and whatnot, where I can really go into details, tell

them why I think things do go by the improbable.   This is how it stands at

the moment.


This is due to your desire to climb on a vast body of material that has de­

veloped in physics--you know, you don't like to clutter yourself up with,

or at least you said last time that you really didn't want to read too much.

You wanted to be able to think and work with your hands and let the mater­

ial itself determine judgments about it as distinct from reading about it.


     Yes.


But in a field as complex as electronics.


     Yes, one has to read some, of course--some fundamental things.


If you had the chance to talk to the Nobel Prize winning physicist, you

could sample him, but then I think you said--oh, there was a man who visited

you periodically who was a physicist who had the technical equipment and to

whom you could present your problem and get from him from his point of view,

quantum mechanics, some explanation--Beyers, was it?


     Who?


A physicist--a Hungarian physicist.


     I don't know--I just had a physicist here for three weeks, a very

leading one, Dr. Bay.
                                                                        148




I think that's the one you mentioned.


        Yes, he helped me a great deal.    Freshen up your drink.


I find it exciting that you get into biology again and get pushed back.


        Yes, I went through the whole gamut of organization, as I told you,

until I came down to electrons, and then from electrons I thought I would

go back to the cell level, but again from the cell level I am again pushed

down.     It's always--life is always moving so, a whole gamut of organization,

but electrical phenomena have not been appreciated enough and for a very

definite reason I could solve, it looks as though an electron couldn't go

over from one molecule to another.        I have shown what are the conditions

for it to do that, but that is very interesting, and I am planning again

to write a book, maybe--I'm still far from it, because I need much more

material.     I have already started to write it up--my last book on Bioelec­

tronics--yes.     It will take quite some time because writing is part of my

research work because then the problems come when you put it down.          You

lay it all out, and you can see the hitch.        If I just think, then I don't

know whether it's a hitch or not--my thoughts jump, but if I lay it out on

paper, then I can see it.


I guess with the new things that they have, that we're beginning to see

weather whole--satellite pictures of a whole area.        We don't understand

them yet, but we can see them.     It wouldn't surprise me that a small thing

like a cell would be pretty much the same way with this promiscuity--the

improbable choice, really, that it makes somehow.        That's exciting.


        It's very nice.
                                                                        149




I guess matters have settled down here in Woods Hole, have they not?


        Oh, yes.


Summer's over.


        I didn't have too much trouble--some, but I cannot really complain.

It's nice to have life around you for a few months in the summer and then-­

well, it 1 s nice in June when they come and then in September, you say how

nice it is that they go.      It 1 s always nice.


Do you see problems in measurement that require new instruments, or new

techniques, apparatus, that you 1 re going to need?


        How is that?   I didn't get that.


Do you see problems that are emerging now in your thinking that are going

to require new instruments?


        No.   No--the instrumentation is all right for the time--yes.    Not yet-­

maybe some time, but it 1 s very amusing.      Just yesterday I began to see re­

lations between my problem and the origin of life--how life originated and

what the first things would be, the fact of coming together and how--I don 1 t

know.     I may be wrong, but it's always exciting to think of it--the origin

of life and I begin to see a connection with my present work.        It 1 s very

amusing.


That's life--it sprawls in a hundred and one directions all at the same

time--some of them mutually contradictory, but they work, and it 1 s improba­

ble.     Well, let me get this transcribed and send it all back to you.
                                                                          150




     Yes, so this is about all that we had to talk about.

     I looked into my early collected papers.         I have it all, but my secre­

tary is not here.     She went away for a vacation.      She is a very nice lady,

and she needed a holiday, so she went away.         We 1 11 have to go up to my study,

or I can bring those volumes down here.      My plan was to write out the titles

of the papers--actually they are all put together, and they have to be la­

beled.   I will bring them down and show you what I have, and I will be glad

to have it deposited in the library.      It's the whole collection.      If any­

body is interested in what I have done, the papers are there.          I would like

to have a list myself of all the papers.


Could we do that for you at the library?


     You might do that.     I'll bring you those volumes down, and we can look

at them right away.     It's still very stormy outside--and blowing.


It's beautiful. and that sun feels good.


     Well, this is the most important one--this is collected papers from

1913 to 1926--yes, my first papers, and here you have the catalogue.            If

this could be copied and sent to    me--s □ meone   could make me a catalogue.


We can Xerox that in no time at all.


     Yes, you can Xerox that in no time at·all.         That is number one.     This

is number two--1926 to 1931.     There is no catalogue, I guess--oh, yes,

there is a catalogue.


Xerox again.
                                                                         151




       Yes, Xerox again, and send it to me.    Now, then I went to Szeged in

1934, but here is no catalogue--oh, yes, here is a catalogue.       This is now

not only my own work, but I have become director of the institute, and this

contains the work of my associates--1930-1933.      This is from the institute

at Szeged.


Does it have a catalogue too?


       Yes, it has a catalogue.    Then here's 1933-1937, but this has no cata­

logue.    This has no catalogue.    Here a catalogue must be written.


All right.     Are the papers numbered?


       Somebody has to type out the titles.




       This is now Woods Hole--the Institute for Muscle Research.       This has

no catalogue either.


Yes.


       Here are unique things--quite unique things.    I don't know what value

they have, but--you see, during the beginning of the war, I was still at

liberty--! mean the second half I had to go underground, but then there was

no way to publish outside the country, so I had everything printed in Sze­

ged.     There are three volumes of that.   They don't exist any more.     These

are the only copies left.     I have only these copies, but I am willing to

part with them if I get a catalogue of them too.      You see, I would need a

Xerox of the title page and then the contents that would be here probably--
                                                                       152




the title page, and the contents--if I could rely on that, that I would get

that?    That is the only copy I have, and it would be impossible to provide

another.    This is the last thing I have here.     I was President of the Acad­

emy or something, and I founded the Hungarica Acta Physiologica, volume one,

number one, number two and three, and four and five.       These are the first

three volumes.     I had a few papers in these.    Most of them are the papers

of my associates who published there because nobody else worked there in

Hungary--yes, these are all my associates.


Can you tell me something about this group of people here?


        They are all my associates--! mean my assistants, or associates.

Banga--that was a young girl, a doctor.     Erdos was a young medical student

just over his studies.     He's now in Paris.     Gerendas is still in Hungary.

Mommaerts is in California.     Straub is now a leading figure in Hungary.

Well, they are all my youngsters--my pupils, beginners and pupils of mine.


They published a fantastic number of papers--Banga particularly.        Was she

a biochemist?


        I don't know what she was--a chemist.     She was an innocent, little

girl.


She published a lot of papers.     I also wrote you in my letter about the

files at Woods Hole now, those that your secretary keeps for you.


        Well, my correspondence--she is away, but my correspondence is of no

interest at all--! don't even know what's there.        It's not--there is no in­

teresting correspondence between two scientists about a problem, or some-
                                                                           153




thing like what you read sometimes, like Claude Bernard writing to this and

that--there is just silly business, and it is entirely uninteresting.             I

don't think it is of any interest--it 1 s enormous amounts--she collects most

of the correspondence, but it is utterly uninteresting.


Does it go back to the time when the Muscle Institute began?


       No, because--well, she became my secretary much later, and I didn't

preserve anything.


Nothing.


       So that is not interesting.     You can have it all, but it is entirely

uninteresting--bills and whatnot, but she 1 s not here now.        If she would be

here, she would be glad to let you have anything, but it would be just a

waste of time, I think.    There is no really interesting thing there.           Some

of the letters may be between me and the NIH about my debt to NIH, and I

don 1 t know--this and that.     I 1 ve told you all about that.   I don 1 t know even

what 1 s there, but it 1 s enormous amounts of letters.


Let me ask you this--have you had any correspondence with other scientists?


       What?


Have you had any correspondence with other scientists?


       No--not about problems.


When I asked you if you attended Congresses in order to get idea, you did

not.
                                                                     154




     No--never.   I never get ideas from others.    It all comes from the ma­

terial--the testtube itself.


The sense of the fingers chemistry.


     Yes, and my own thinking day and night, day and night--all the time,

thinking, thinking, and thinking about it, so I gradually get it out.       I

never had much correspondence with scientists really about problems.       Those

days are passed when important things were settled by correspondence.


Really.


     Now, i f you know something, you publish it.   That's all.


That's the measure of communication now--the publication.


     Yes--if you know something, and most people are in a great hurry to

publish if they know something and even if they don't know something.


Your judgment is that the files your secretary keeps aren't ....


     Aren't worth your time--no.   You see I have no files.    It's just silly

correspondence.


Where you may have gone--invitations.


     Hundreds of them, but ••..


No critical comment on some speech you made?


     You see, most letters are not preserved at all.     You see, it's very

incomplete.   Mrs. Brown doesn't have my whole correspondence because most
                                                                        155




things I read and then throw away.      I give her only things which have to

be answered, and then I dictate an answer, but most things I just throw

away.     Not everything goes through her hands.   It goes through my hands

first and then into hers, so I have no end of letters, invitations, of

course, to give lectures which--wsll, ninety-nine percent I refuse, and

then I have many letters expressing gratitude for what I have dons and from

good standing scisntists--physicists who went into biology because they

read my papers, and they read my book, and they owe gratitude to ms and not

infrequently I get something, a great acknowledgment of simple gratitude

for what I have dons for them.     Even if I don't even know them or have seen

them, I have influenced their lives and I get this kind of mail, but I don't

preserve it.     If I had preserved it, I would have a pretty big collection,

but I don't preserve things.     I just like to go through life.    I don't like

to fix anything.     I just want to forget about it and go on and on and on-­

you see, the people who live in the past--thsy are finished.       I like to

forget the past.


Collectors have already suffered a psychic death.


        So I don 1 t--I went through yssterday--you see, I have a big heap of

letters I don't want to throw away and I don 1 t--I just put them aside until

there is a heap.     I had to find an address of somebody in the National Sci­

ence Foundation, and I went through a few of these letters just to throw

away, to get rid of paper.     I found a letter from Melvin Calvin who was a

Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.      Maybe I can find it--gratituds for what

I have dons in influencing his work and his life.      I have another letter

from Krebs, a very funny story.      I think I didn't tell it to you.
                                                                     156




Is this where you saved him?


     Yes--well, that letter just happened to be there in that bunch.        There

are also many letters--that self-biographic note which has been reprinted

many times--people writing to me asking whether they may print it again,

but I don't keep anything.     You see, I am not a backward looking type.     I

am a forward looking type.     Even now at my age I look forward.


That tells its own story.


     While I am alive, I 1 m looking forward, not backward.   As soon as you

begin to live in the past, then you have retired really.      I haven't retired.


I think you're right--when you begin to live in the past, you might just

as well lie down because the ball game is over.


     Yes.


I agree, but I am sorry that you didn't save your correspondence.      As a

historian I have to say that.


     There was no point.     I lost everything so many times in my life that

I don't preserve things because--anyway, I expect they will get blown away

by the next storm.


I understand.


     Yes--outside of science what still keeps my thoughts busy is t~is damn

business in Viet Nam.   I think that the present administration violates the

basic principles on which this country is built, and that will not go unpun-
                                                                     157




ished, I'm afraid.    As far as I can see, America is going downhill very

fast which hurts me very much because I am in love with this country.       I

love this country very much--it 1 s my only country which I can call my own

now, and I see it going down very fast from the talks with other scientists

at conferences.    I can see how the American prestige goes to hell with this

senseless killing in Viet Nam and how America retrenches on the frontiers

where it should expand--scientific endeavor, research and influences--funds

are cut and money gets more and more scarce.

     In the last years America expanded and already began to finance re­

search abroad in Europe which was a very good investment because there you

can really reap the fruits, if anyone makes some discovery.     We reap the

fruit just as much, and you can choose the best ones and need not pay for

their education.     It's a very good idea--NIH did a good job, but they've

been retrenching on all essential frontiers and expanding and escalating

in killing.   A few months ago we spent fifty thousand dollars to kill one

Viet Cong and probably one South Viet Namese at his side.     Last month the

cost escalated--it was calculated at about a hundred thousand dollars to

kill one Viet Cong.     Now, a country which cannot spend money better is not

the kind to lead the world, and that hurts me very much.     I was very much

in the front line in fighting against it here, but now there are so many

hundreds and thousands of people who fight against it there is no point in

my fighting it any more.     I was the first to attack President Johnson when

he sent fifty thousand people to Viet Nam.     I attacked him in an open let­

ter in the New York Times where I called him a traitor--that 1 s what he is,

betraying his basic principles for the defense of which he was elected.

That was a beginning, but since then thousands of people go marching and
                                                                      158




write.     I get so much junk--peace junk mail--why do they send me peace junk

mail?     I am for peace.   People just don't know what to do.

        They are so hopeless with this awful thing we are doing in Viet Nam,

and we spread communism.      One could argue whether it's America's vocation

to contain communism, but to spend that money to spread communism is silly

because that is what we do.      To be partners in such a swindle as this elec­

tion--makes it a super-swindle.      Not only was the election a swindle, but

now Johnson swindled by sending observers there when he knew that the swin­

dle was already arranged--a super-swindle--you see, because they, the South

Viet Namese have two good people whom the people trust but they are in exile.

They are not allowed to come and run for president, and all little people-­

wherever little people are all running for candidates, of course, none of

them can get a majority against the military pressure there, so it was

really a swindle, and by Johnson sending observers, Congressmen, to see

that it was a clean election, it was a super-swindle--all dishonest.        All

American policy is cruel, inhuman, and unpaternal ..•.
                              INDEX



ACADalIC      PRESS                   74
ACADl!MI OF PARIS                     9
ACCEPTOR                              103
A.Ott,.   SClNDINA.VICA               92
ACTIN                                 87, 90
ACTO!'.IOSilf                         91, 100
J.DBElW, GLJ.Il)S.                    34-3,, SO
J.DRElfAL STEROIDS                    102
A.NAPHILAIIS                          q2

ANA.TOMI                              1, 8, 36
ANTI..Sl!MITISM                       -o, 4$-46, $2
ASCORBIC ACID                         so, a1, es, 93
AS'fBURt, W• T •                      83
ATP-A.DElfOSIB TRIPHOSPHATE           91., 94, 102
.lUS'l'RllN COURT                     3-4


B.lCTERIOLOGr                         11. 28, 31, 37
BA.NGA, I•                            87, 90, 1,2
BASIC llSF.lRat                       78, 81
BAY, ZOLTAlf                          u3, 147
                                      62
BERLIII                               30, 40
BIOCBD!ISTRr                          33, 3$-36, 1-4, 48-49, 70, 99,
                                          101, 103 1 1091 U7, 1.Wi
BIOELECTROBICS                                148
BIOENERGE'l'ICS                               100-101, 144
BIOLOGY                                       103, 10,, 110, lb.8
BRINKMA.N1 R.                                 L.3-h4, 13.5
BRITISH SECRET SERVICE                        53-55
BBOOD, SENATOR E.                             lJa
BRORK, DETLEV                                 77-78
BRO'llf UNIVERSITI                            12S


C4 DIC.lRBOIILIC     ACm CATALYSIS            Jak
CAJAL1 RAMOS 7                                11
CALVIN, MELVIN                                1.$.5
CANCER                                        83-84
CANCER Ri'SEARCH                              14,S
CAPILLA.RY BLEC'l'ROMETIR                     37
CHARGE 'l'BANSFllR                            100, 1011 102 1 1031 1041 109,
                                                      lh8
CJIOOSTRr                                     171     36•:n
CJIRCMATOORAPHIC 'l'ECHNIQUES                 119
CLlRIC, TCll C.                               66
OOHI, EDWIW                                   132.-133
OOLLECTB> PAPfflS:                            l.$0•1.56
CONSCIOUS A.lfD SUBCONSCIOUS                  106
CORI, C.&m,                                   241 39~0
OOR'?ISOD                                     102• 103
COX, GERAU> L.,•CrystalliDe ntain C and
     hexuroai.c acicl• 86 Science Sb0-.51&2
     (Dec•ber 101 1937)                       82
DALE,   sm   HfflRY                       31'-35
DARWIN, CHARLES Re                        123
DECANOZOV                                 62
DIFFERENCES IN CLASS ATTITUDFS            2•3
DNA                                       109
DU'l'CH PHYSIOLOGICAL SOCIE1'Y            31


EDUOATIOlf                                121..J.2$
ELECTRON BIOENERGETICS'                   109
ELECTRON SPI1f ll&>NANCE MACIIINE         103,119
ELECTRONIC DIMENSION                      100
ELECTRONS                                 17, 9~899, 100-102, 103, 104

ELECTROPHYSIOLOGr                         30, 37, 39
ENERGY                                    100-J.02

ENTROPY                                   101, 102, 104

ENGELHARDT I Wo   Ao                      91
ERDOS, Te                                 152


FARADAY, MICHAEL                          11.4
FDaLE INFLUENCE IV A RESEARCEERt·s LIFE   1.35..J.lo
FEUDALI9'1                                1-2, 27, 127
FOLIR, OTTO                               132


GERENDJ.S1 M.                             152

GESTAPO                                   53 1 56, 511 SB, 591 92
GLYCEROL                                     94-9S
G<JIBAS1 P.                                  110-m
GRAM 1 S STAIN                               4S
GROCER!' STORE                               63-64, 111


IUMBIJRG                                     30, 31, 41
HAMBURGl!R, R. J •                           31, 32, 33, 43
HARVARD UNIVERSITY                           93, ]32..J.33
HEARf ASSOCI.11' IOI                         78
HEIDELBERGER, MU                             66
HEXURONIC ACID                               71•72
HIGH ENERGY HiOSHIATE BOIi)                  102
HISTOLOGY                                    a,    16
HITLER, ADOLPH                               S7, 58, 66,118,130, 1b2
HOLLA?I)                                     32.33, 3S, 36, h2-43
HOOVERJJ J • EDOAR                           ll3
BOPIINS, SIR FREDERICK OOtlIAND              33•34, 46, 471 48~5o, 10, 106
HUIIGARIAI ACADFMY OF   ~ IENCES             63, lll
HUNGARIAN lfATIONAL COUNCIL OF EilJCATIOlf   121
HUIG.ARIAlf REVOLUTIOl'1 1848                3-k
HUNGARIAN SOCIE'l'I
HumARIAR TRA. VEL AO ENCY                    6h
HUNGABICA ACTA HIISIOLOGICA                  1s2
HUKlER ED!Jfl                                4l
HYDROG-Emf-IOlf CONCENl.'RATION              37
IDF.A OF WANTING TO BE USEFUL                               99
D1PROBABLE FROCESS'm                                        lb6..J.47
INCOME TAI                                                  79-80~ 140-141
INFLU!BCE OF MILK ON TIE GRCWI'H OF
         AtmIAIB                                            49
INFRARED SPEC?ROSCOPE                                       119
INSTITUTE FOR MUSCLE RFSEARcrH                              77-80, 81, 83, 117, 134, 151
INTELLECTUAL CREATIVITY                                     9.10, 19, 107
IlffERNATIOlfAL PHYSIOLOOICAL CONGRFSS,
         S'fOCKHOIJ!                                        :n-311
DffERNlTIOMi CHEMICAL OOHORESS                              74
DSr ITUTE OF TROPICAL HYGIENE, HAMBURG                      30.31, U
ISTANBUL                                                    53...55


JOHNSOlf1 J.. B•



OMIHER, B.                                                  ,k-95
KAROLll, MICHAEL                                            29• .30
KENDELL, H.                                                 so,   74
KENNEDY, JCIIH F.                                           79
IINO, DR.        c.   Ge                                    72, 73-78, 82, 113
ICING,    c.o.   & WAUGH, W•       .1., "Chudeal   Nature
         of Vitamin        c• 75   Science 357•358
         (April 11 1932)                                    73
KLlYBERSBERG, COOl'l'                                       50...51
KODALll, Z                                                  14;
KREBS CYCLE                                                 .,, 87, 88
KREBS, H• .le                                               45-46, 155-156
                                          90


LABCR.«r ORI EQUIPMEtfl'                  119
LA.KI, K.                                 87
LEEOSSEK BACKGROlRD                       s-11, 13, 1,..J.6
LENHOSSEK, MIHALY                         8-ll, 13, lS
•tI?«)SEG•                                7
LIVIIG CELL AS ELECTRICAL GADGET          lJm
LIVINGSTONE, DAVID                        21-22
LOBSTERS                                  67-68


MCClRTHI, SENATOR JOSElH                  77


MACHIAVELLI                               7S
MAHLER,     GUSTAV                        8

MALI~I                                    61
MANSFELD,     o.                          24, 2~ 37~ 39
MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABOR.It ORI            94, 96, 97, 116, 129
MA'IHFlfATICS:                            109, 110, 113
MA.YO CLINIC                              so
MEDICAL SCHOCL, UNIVERSI'ff OF BUDlPEST   19-20, 22-24
MERCURI ELECTRCl)E                        .39
MICHAELIS, LF.ONOR                        30,, 37, 40-U
MOLOTOV                                   60

MCHU.ERTS, W• F • H. M.                   152

MOSCOW                                    61, 62
MUSCLE                                     88--93, 94-95, 96, 105, 109
MUSCULAR CONTRAarION                       no
MUSIC                                      8-10,     ho, 63
MIOASTHENIA                                96
MIOTONIA                                   96
MYOSIN                                     89,    90



NATIONAL INSTITUTES    or HEALTH           75, 7~1 7~1- 79, Bo, 82, ll7,
                                                l.40..J.bl., 153, 157
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION                155
NAZIS                                      45,    51-60., 92
NEAL, FHIL                                 15
IEGATIVE Elft'ROP!                         101
lfEWl' ON, SIR ISAAC                       101, 123
HEW YORK TIMES                             10,,   130, 1.57
NOBU, PRIZE                                2k, 44, 4~, SO, 62, 73, 75, 88
                                                91, a2, lSS
ll)RTH'WESrERN UNIVERSITY                  133.134


OXIDATION COffl'ROVERSI

OXIDJr ION OF SlJCCINIC ACID ARD FUMERIC
     ACID


PATENT                                     81
PEN'LANCE POINT                            67
lERSOHAL OORRESPONDntCE AHD PAPmS          l.5'2-1$6
PHARMACOLOGY                               17, 31, 36
PHYSIC£ CHJ!MISl'RI                        30:, 31
PHYSIOLOGI

PLANCI, Mil

PLANCK COlfSTAJIT

POZSONY (BRATISLAVA)

PRODUCTION OF LACTIC ACID Itf MUSCLE
     COHTRA.CTION                      48
PID'IINE                               96, 98
PROMISCUITY AK)?ll MOLECULES·          103
PRACJJE                                30, 37, 39-40
PROTEIN SY!ffHF8I S                    97, 98
PSALMUS                                10$


QUANTtJM MECHANICS                     11, 109, 110,   m,   113,127


RATH, DR.                              63, 64-66, 77, 78, 79, 80, l.14,
                                                us,
                                                 116
RELIGIOB                               15-16
RE'l'ID                                97
REVOLUTIOlf                            126, 127
RIGOR MORTIS                           94
ROCKEFELLER 1ELLOWSi IP                33, 34
ROCIEFELLER INS'l"ITUTE                u
RUSSIANS                               59..66
RUSSIAN SCIENCE                        99


SaJRVY                                 71
SDOLOGI                                31, h2
      SENSITIZATION                                   la2
'j<
      SISTER ANGELICA                                 2$
      SKEPTICISM IN HUMAN AFFAIRS                     20-21, 28t!l29
      SOCIAL INFLUENCF.S IN HUNGARIAN sc:rm CE        $0-$1
      STALIN                                          61-62
      STRAUB, F • B.                                  871 90, 1$2
      STRilll GALVAN<Jm'EB.                           39
      SUBMOLECULAR BIOLOGY                            100-101, 1.44
      SUCCINIC OXIDASE                                44
      SWEDISH LEGATION                                57, 92
      SWENSON, MR.                                    57
      SWIRBl!I.,Y, J •   Le                           71..74, 76, 113
      SWITZERLAND                                     8, 64, 65, 66, 111
      SZEN'r-G!ORGYI 1 ALBERT1 11 Identitication of
            Vitaain C11 87 Science 214-21$
            (March 4, 1938).                          83
      SZENT-OYOROYI, ANDREW                           115
      SZENT-aieRGYI BACKGROUND                        3-5
      SZENT-GYORGYI-BLOC>IE CENTRIFUGE                81, 84,   85
      SZENT-oYeRon, JOSEPHINE (LENHOSSF.%)            5-6, 8-9, 10, 11, 13, 17, 2,, 26
      SZENT-GYeRGYI, NICJIOLAS                        2-3, 5-6, 13.14, 1a, 107
      SZENT..aieROYI, PAUL                            11-13, 17-18


      TAI ED!MPl' INSI'ITUTES                         79
      T!MPLE UNIVERSITY                               138
      TF.ST FOR PEROXIDASE                            70
      THE ffiINCE                                     75
THFDRELL, HUGO

mnros aLAm
TRANSYLVANIA

ffPHUS FEVER


UNIVERSITY OF BRATISLAVA       24-26, 37, 39
UNIVERSITY OF BUDAPEST         7, 18-19,    uo,   ll4
UNIVERSITY OF GRONI?llEN       31, 34, 36, 43-44, 46, 87
UNIVERSITI OF LEIDEi           311 361 h2-43
Ulf.IVERSITI OF PENNSYLVANIA   lll

UNIVERSI'l'I OF SZEGED         44-45, ,o, 51, 56, 61, 82, 86, 88
                                     ll4, 151
UNIVERSITY OF TRANSYLVANIA     51
UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA           7
Uo Se NAVY                     76-77, 78


VAN LEEUWEN, W• S'IDffl        31,. 42-43
VERSAil,I,ES TRF.ATY           24
VERZARI, FRITZ:                31
VESTID INTmESTS                125-131
VIET CXHll                     157
VIET NAM                       117, 130, 156-158
VITAMIN C                      44, 69.78, 82, 88, 93
VITAMIN P                      75
VITAMINS                       49
VON TSCHERMAK, ARMIH           .30, 39
VOROSHILOV                                     64


WARBURG,   o.                                  361 45
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY                          39
WAUGH, W• A.,. & KING, c. G., •Isolation and
     Identification or Vitamin C" 97 Journal
     et Biologcal CbeJd.strz 325..,331
     (Jui.y, 19 2j.                            73
WIELAND, H.                                    36
WOODS HOLE                                     67-68, 191 1121 1141 1341 lh91
                                                    l.Sl



ZILAHY1 L•                                     64
ZURICH                                         7b