The scientist returns

© Horváth Szabolcs

Csaba Szabo is one of the most oft- cited Hungarian scholars in the world. The son of an agricultural engineer and an accountant from Gyor, he has had an effortless career. He studied at Budapest Medical School, graduating with distinction. He submitted his doctoral dissertation in 1991, the same year in which he received his first degree. "I was warned that this was unusual, but I argued that it didn't break the rules." He won his PhD at the age of 27, and five years later he became a Doctor of the Academy. He won a place in the Nobel Prize-winner John Vane's London laboratory, and set up his own research lab in Cincinnatti in 1994. There, he established his own pharmaceuticals company along with his colleagues. Last year, to the surprise of many, he decided to return home, becoming director of Budapest Medical School's Technology Transfer and Innovation Office. For a while he was almost invisible, until he started criticising the "feudalism" of the Academy system, bringing the wrath of much of the scientific community down on to his shoulders.

We asked people about you. Some said you were a genius in your field, others that you were very good at looking after yourself.

If people can't cope with it, then they'll claim that there are all kinds of problems with me. As far as looking after myself is concerned, I think everyone does it to some extent. Everybody after his own fashion.

Lets assume you are one of the best. It would be immodest to ignore the possibility of a Nobel Prize.

My most successful and most oft-cited piece of research focuses on cell death caused by free radicals. We used these results to build molecules at the company I founded. If these molecules ever become medicines, then even the prize you mentioned may come my way. But to make a medicine out of those molecules will take five or six years. It will take another four or five years to make that medicine successful.

With such ambitious plans. how can you spare the energy for the pitched battles you regularly engage in?

I pay a price for it, but if we bring about a change in academic life, and if I contribute just 5 per cent of that, then it will have been worthwhile. I'll be very happy if I am given a university chair, but I'll still be happy without. I'll carry on doing my thing for as long as I'm allowed to.

But the way you said your piece in front of the Academy's building. You seemed to enjoy it…?

I fell into the kind of absurd situation you can enjoy as you might enjoy Orkeny or Ionesco.

Was it this that brought you home?

The journal Nature wrote about the catastrophic state of Hungarian science two years ago. It concluded that change would only come if scientists working abroad returned home, people who were not dependent on the existing system, people who would "make some noise." I thought that was an opportunity for me to open my mouth, because I am not dependent on the Hungarian academic community.

We'll see. Many fail to understand why it's you whinging, since you've got everything you want – including money.

They think if somebody's doing ok, he should keep his mouth shut. In other words: you have a nice villa, ignore the hovels surrounding it.

You could be a politician. But you've changed jobs a lot…

It's only here that students are expected to stay in the same place until they retire. In places where the market rules, if someone becomes well-known, then people come and headhunt him. That's how you get on. It's the other way round here: everyone sticks to his own little mound.

So what brought you back? Beyond simple patriotism, of course…

I can speak my mother tongue here. My friends and parents are here, the food is Hungarian, the culture and the music too. Not big things, but they matter.

And the big things? The Nobel Prize? Most successful Hungarian scholars won acclaim abroad.

The world has changed. If a Hungarian researcher has a bit of luck and writes a good grant application, then he can get funding here as well. Of course, it's harder to get hold of certain things. The old Hungarian mentality of envy doesn't help, either. Competition is fiercer abroad, because science is business. Here, who you know is more important.

Are you as outspoken at home? Your wife must be very calm and acquiescent.

You're wrong. My wife has very strong opinions. So do our children. If they aren't happy, they make it very clear to us.

Have you never thought of spending more time with your family? We've heard that your income from your company is so good that you could just do everything as a hobby.

Right now I'm considering taking an unpaid holiday, just to stop the rector telling the television exactly how much I earn. I never asked him how much he received from his patients in under-the-table parasolvency or "thank-you money".

What if one day a young researcher returns home from America and gets angry when he sees you getting every single grant, stopping his generation from getting any of the spoils?

When I'm as old as the grand old men of today, then we will no longer have a 'life or death' structure in Hungarian science. I hope I will have the self-criticism to know when to retire. When I feel I'm no longer useful, I hope I will have the sense to retire.

András Lindner – Zolt án Horváth