Nobel Prize Recipient. Albert Szent-Györgyi, a Hungarian biochemist, received international recognition after being awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for, according to the Nobel Prize committee, "his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid." Starting as early as 1928, he began research focusing on how nutrients are broken down to release energy for the construction of cells. With 24 nominations for the Nobel candidacy, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, while British chemist, Walter Haworth and Swiss chemist, Paul Karrer , who also researched vitamins, received jointly the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. There were long and acrimonious deliberations on which worthy candidate would receive which category of the Nobel Prize. Born the son of a wealthy landowner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his maternal grandfather and uncle were Professors of Anatomy in today's Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. His mother was a trained opera singer, his brother was a violinist, and he played the piano. Studying in his uncle's laboratory, his first published paper was on the epithelium of the anus. Leaving his studies, he served during World War I in the army of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the medical corps on the Italian and Russian fronts, and being awarded the Silver Medal for Valor. After being wounded with a gunshot wound to the arm, he was discharged in 1917; some sources state that the wound was self-inflicted. Graduating with a Medical degree in 1917, he accepted a couple of positions with pharmacologists, studying electrophysiology, before he went to Hamburg, Germany for a two-year course in physical chemistry at the Institute for Tropical Hygiene. In 1920 he became an assistant at the University Institute of Pharmacology in Leiden, and from 1922 to 1926 he held a post at the Physiology Institute at Groningen in The Netherlands. After being recognized in 1927 by Sir Frederick Hopkins, 1929 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, he traveled to Cambridge, England as a Rockefeller Fellow for a post in Hopkins' laboratory, followed by a one-year invitation to do research at the Mayo Foundation at Rochester, Minnesota, before returning to Cambridge, receiving his PhD in 1929 with the thesis, "Hexuronic acid." In 1930 the Hungarian minister of education requested him to return to his homeland to revitalize the scientific community; he obtained the Chair of Medical Chemistry at the University of Szeged and in 1935 took the Chair in Organic Chemistry. In 1937 he received the Nobel Prize for discovering vitamin C. Becoming political, in 1940 he gave all his Nobel Prize monetary award to Finland in support of their fight against the Soviet Union invasion. As the Nazi Party came to power in the 1930s, he was actively anti-Nazi. During World War II, he became a Swedish citizen and was given extensive support by the Swedish Embassy in Budapest. At the end of World War II, he took the Chair of Medical Chemistry at Budapest. With the Communist Party entering Hungary in 1947 he fled his homeland to settle in the United States where he became the Director of Research at the Institute of Muscle Research at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There he did research not only on cell metabolism but muscles, cancer and free radicals, body energy, quantum physics, chemistry of the thymus gland, and many other scientific interests studying into his last years of life. In the 1950s with grants from the American Heart Association and Armor Meat Company, he was afforded the opportunity to establish the Institute for Muscle Research. In 1955 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. As a member of several learned European societies, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences elected him a member in 1956. He was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1936 and Franchi Professor at Belgium's University of Liège in 1938. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received the Cameron Prize from Scotland in 1946 and the coveted Lasker Award in Basic Medical Research in 1954, for contributions to understanding cardiovascular disease through basic muscle research. A prolific author, he produced 300 scientific articles and 11 books, which include "Oxidation, Fermentation, Vitamins, Health and Disease" in 1939; "Muscular Contraction" in 1947; "The Nature of Life" in 1947; "Contraction in Body and Heart Muscle" in 1953; "Bioenergetics" in 1957 and "What next?!" in 1971. Being fervently outspoken opponent of military spending, nuclear weapons, and especially the Viet Nam War, he was pessimistic about the state of modern life and expressed his sociopolitical views in his 1970 book, "The Crazy Ape." He refused to pay his income tax in protest against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. On his first visit back to Hungary in 1973, he received an honorary doctorate from the Medical University of Szeged; that institution was renamed Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical University in 1987. He married four times: first to the daughter of the Hungarian Postmaster-General in 1917, and they had one daughter the next year. After a divorce, he married a co-worker at Woods Hole in 1941. In 1965 as a widower, he married a 25-year-old for three years, and after a divorce, he married in 1975 and adopted another daughter. He died of kidney failure at the age of 93 years. He was honored on a stamp issued by Hungary in 1988. One of his many quotes, "Think boldly, don't be afraid of making mistakes, don't miss small details, keep your eyes open, and be modest in everything except your aims."