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TIBS 15-JULY1990 SPEC[ALFEATURE The Hungarian Biochemical Society will host the 20th FEBS meeting in Budapest this August. Here, Peter Friedrich, chairman of the Scientific Program Committee for the meeting, presents an overview of biochemical research in Hungary. The roots of biochemical research in Hungary reach back to the turn of this century, to the heroic age of physiologi- cal chemistry. The first electrometric titration of proteins was performed by the Hungarian's Bugarszky and Liebermann on egg white in 1898, with a precision hardly surpassable by modern methods. Such early endeav- ours attained their summit in the 1930s, when Albert Szent-GyBrgyi established his school at the University of Szeged. He and his collaborators made several fundamental contributions in the fields of cell respiration and of muscle con- traction, not to mention the discovery of vitamin C. For his pioneering work, Szent-GySrgyi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1937 (the only Hungarian Nobel laur- eate to receive this distinction for work done in his native land). This was indeed a promising start, but from which history did not allow a smooth development. World War II shat- tered laboratories and scattered the members of the Szeged team. Szent- Gy6rgyi's uncompromising spirit found reconciliation with the rapidly expand- ing Stalinistic regime impossible, as he vividly described in the prefatory chap- ter of the 1963 Annual Review of Biochemistry. He left his homeland and found refuge in the United States. Several of his associates, such as K. Laki, noted for his work on blood co- agulation proteins, followed suit. Some, however, stayed, among them I. Bangha, the discoverer of elastase, and E B. Straub, who first isolated actin. It was Straub who through the next decades etched his profile onto biochemistry in Hungary. With him the liberal, scien- tifically democratic atmosphere that Szent-Gy6rgyi had imported from the West was maintained through the dark ages, although sometimes restricted only to his immediate circle. The defeat of the 1956 revolution and short-lived i~i~ i t ,~ ~. < ! freedom fight of the Hungarian people produced another wave of emigration from the country, again tapping the bio- chemical community. Many of those who left have made reasonable careers in Western Europe and America. However, I am to write about those who, as the retrospective wit has it, stayed at home out of adventurousness. In fact, in the late 1960s and early 1970s the adventure seemed to work well. There was a boom in the economy, however transient, living standards rose, and there was investment in sci- ence. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences founded a complex Biological Research Center at Szeged, which was opened in 1973. The Center, a modern affair living up to Western standards, accommodates five institutes (biochem- istry, enzymology, biophysics, genetics and plant physiology) employing around 180 research staff. It is perhaps the most outstanding interdisciplinary research establishment for biology in the country, attracting many guest lec- turers and visiting scientists. It is also an international postgraduate training center, receiving about 20 students a year, mainly from developing countries. Such shining peaks, however, have been contrasted by the ever deeper marsh of the ill-conceived economic and social system, which has gradually taken its toll of most aspects of the country's life, science included. Universities were particularly badly hit, in line with the depreciation of the intel- ligentsia, an unhappy consequence of a distorted ideology. As I write, however, Hungary is taking an historic turn, becoming a multiparty, democratic country, with a freely elected parlia- ment. Science, and thus biochemistry, is hoping for a brighter future, although the immediate outlook is still gloomy. While the grant system was introduced in 1986, towards the principle of achievement-oriented funding, in prac- tice there has been little money behind it. With the borders beneficially open, the menace of a massive brain drain emerges: will this become the third ex- odus within 50 years? This time, how- ever, a dynamic equilibrium may be established, tying Hungary with many strands to the world's scientific elite. It is to the merit of those biochemists who pitched themselves stubbornly against sand and wind and stayed here, that, despite all tribulations, Hungarian biochemistry has little to be ashamed of. On the basis of per capita expen- diture Hungarian biological research ranks high in the world, as witnessed by scientometric ratings. Hungary is the first country to host a FEBS Meeting for a second time: the 9th Meeting which was also held in Budapest (in 1974) was a pronounced success. In Hungary, biochemistry is taught at four university medical schools and three science faculties, as well as at technical, agricultural and horticultural university schools. Research graduates may apply to the Board of Scientific Qualifications of the Academy of Sciences for a three-year fellowship or take up employment in a laboratory to work towards their doctorate. There is an increasing trend for post-doctoral fellows, and more recently even predoc- toral students, to find jobs in Western laboratories. To promote biotechnological re- search with particular emphasis on applications for agriculture, the tra- ditional pillar of Hungary's economy, an Agricultural Biotechnologicai Center was opened at G6dBil6 in 1989. This well-equipped establishment houses institutes for biochemistry and protein engineering, molecular genetics, plant and animal biotechnology, employing altogether about 100 researchers. This new enterprise has a promising future, insofar as some of the country's leading experts could be recruited as directors. A compilation of topics investigated at the major Hungarian institutions that have a biochemical profile is given in Table 1. This list is necessarily incom- plete, unbalanced, and is not detailed either in respect of institutes and de- partments or with regard to individual projects. More than such a bird's-eye- view could not be accommodated in © 1990,Elsevier SciencePublishers Ltd,(UK) 0376-5067/90/$02.00 ~)51
