"I had to decide whether to take on the role of the evil scientist or not"

You were born in Tiszafüred and graduated from high school in Tokaj. What was it like to grow up in this region?

I lived in small villages as a child, first in Tiszanána, then we moved to Mátraszentimre, which is the highest village in Hungary. I remember that wild cherries ripened there much later, at the end of August, so the climate was completely different from the dusty Great Hungarian Plain. For as long as I can remember, I have been surrounded by hills and mountains, something that I still miss here around Szeged. The reason for this constant moving was my father taking a teaching job somewhere else, which he explained by his incompatibility with the system. But I had a happy childhood, apart from the fact that my parents divorced early. I went to high school in Tokaj, and after graduation I worked in a blacksmith’s workshop in Debrecen. Then I did my military service in Cegléd and went to university in Debrecen. Later I also lived in several districts of Budapest, Szeged, Gödöllő, Szentendre, Bonn and then again in Szeged. Time after time I joined completely different communities, which had a great impact on my life; I got to know a lot of things and made a lot of friends.

What attracted you to science?

First I was interested in paleontology. At that time, there were not many books about prehistoric animals for children, so I used to read my uncle's university geology books. Apart from dinosaurs, I also learnt about ancient snails, for example. Evolution was a subject that confused me as a child, especially in relation to religion.

Even as a child?

Yes. I believed in Jesus Christ, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny for a very long time, even when all my friends were already aware of the truth. I can distinctly remember the conspiratorial look on my aunt’s face when I claimed to have seen the rabbit in our garden at Easter. It immediately dawned on me that something was not right. I ran over to one of my friends, whose mother enlightened me about the truth. I remember the world collapsing inside me, even though the erosion of that world had already begun earlier. I often had conflicts with the priest who was responsible for religious education, because I wanted to know how to resolve certain contradictions in the biblical stories. I was thrown out of Bible studies because of this.

Thrown out?

Perhaps the word expelled is more accurate. In any case, I was surprised because I didn't want to argue, I wanted to learn. My father didn't want to leave it at that, so I had to go a red-nosed deacon privately, but he didn't tolerate my questions either. But a distant relative - with whom my father had probably warmed up his relationship because of me - was more understanding, brought me picture books on the subject, and I did argue with him. However, neither then nor as an adult did I mind if someone held views different from mine, as I have always been able to separate ideas and people, and this is characteristic of my friendships as well. For me it was instinctive, not a decision or a matter of position.

You mentioned living in Boldogkőváralja. How is your family name connected to this settlement?

I adopted this name before I started publishing because I didn't want to be confused with others. Since I was out of the profession for a while, I was already over thirty when I changed my name.

What do you mean by being out of the profession?

It's a long story. I went to a relatively good primary school and high school. I liked my biology teacher, who taught me a very important lesson. He did not get on at all with my father, who also taught at the same school, but he supported me and even cried when I was unfairly disqualified from an academic competition. An individual should be judged by his own actions, not by his origin - that was the lesson I learnt. I read a lot as a child, not only novels but also academic books, in addition to being out on the streets and in the mountains with my friends. I also had very good teachers in high school, the school had a very stimulating atmosphere for learning. At 10:20 in the evening, the lights went out in the dormitory, but I had a small clip-on lamp, so I read for an hour more. I also got up early in the mornings because I ran up the hill before the morning gym session. I organised debates, which were attended by the teachers as well. But after a politically sensitive topic, I had to stop it. In any case, I did a lot of things - not just science - and it was a very active period in my life. Unfortunately, the university was a great disappointment. In my opinion, biology education was not in the right hands in Debrecen at that time. I specialised in ecology. It was not a subject I was too much interested in, yet I did read a few books on the subject in English in addition to the course material.

Where did you start working after graduation?

After graduating in 1986, I worked as a research assistant in a plant pathology and biotechnology laboratory in Budapest for 4 years. Then I spent one year at the Biological Research Centre of Szeged, where I learned about the methods used in plant cell genetic studies. In 1990 I went to the biotechnology research institute in Gödöllő. At that time my peers were already publishing, and I did not even have a defined research topic.

You also have a degree in economics and foreign trade, how did you get interested in that?

At that time the economic situation was not so good. We already had one child and were planning to have a second one. We were struggling to make ends meet, so I wanted to leave the profession and find a more lucrative position. We mainly studied general economics. It was a difficult time because I had to work on my PhD and my son was small, so I had to spend a lot of time with him. I took him to nursery school in the morning, then to kindergarten, then I went to work. In the afternoon I would bring him home, spend time with him and then go back to work in the evening. Sometimes I would also prepare for an exam at home or read the literature. After graduation, I received some offers from the field of economics, but I did not accept them and stayed in research.

You also spent a few months as a visiting researcher at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia.

I won a grant that allowed me to go abroad. I worked on the molecular biology of the herpes simplex virus. I gained useful professional experience and made some great friends. I have grown to love America. It's very competitive, but if you know something, you stand a good chance of getting ahead. They don’t try to pull you back, as it is often the case in Hungary.

After leaving Gödöllő you worked at the Department of Anatomy of the Semmelweis University for 2 years.

I got there after I started working on a virus - the pseudorabies virus - that is transmitted along the neural pathways. I had an idea how to modify the virus so that it can be used for nerve pathway tracing, so I contacted Prof. Miklós Palkovits, who was the most cited researcher in Hungary at the time. For many years he worked half a year in Hungary and half a year in the United States at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He is still scientifically active today, although he is 90 years old. I told him what the virus could potentially do, and the next day he called me to say he had hired a person and we could start working. So, our professional relationship started years before I began working at SOTE. We've been working together ever since and recently published an article together.

What did you do exactly?

I optimized the virus for tracing. In practice, it meant that the virus had to spread along only one neural pathway, slowly and only in one direction. It also had to express so-called reporter genes that allow you to track where the virus is. With these viruses, we were able to map a number of neural networks. I later worked with Botond Roska, who was then leading a research group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel. With him, we created a system that not only allows us to trace neural pathways, but also to see, for example, whether neurons are active within the pathway and, if so, how active they are. Moreover, with this system we were able to study the function of many nerve cells simultaneously using optical methods, which was a major innovation. Our results were published in prestigious journals and we were granted a joint patent.

After Semmelweis University, you worked as a research fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, University of Bonn for more than three years.