Renowned biochemist Sir George Charles Rada (György Károly Rada) has died. The Hungarian-born British professor, recipient of the Buchanan Medal of the Royal Society, the Order of the British Empire, and the Hungarian Corvin Chain, died on Friday at the age of 88, the Hungarian Corvin Chain Council MTI reported on Saturday.
“He left us a very rich legacy, and his self-sacrificing work is an inspiration and an example for future generations,” said Vezi E. Szilvester, chairman of the Hungarian Corvin Chain and former president of the Hungarian Academy of Science and Technology, in a statement. Friends of Hungary Foundation.
Leaving the world behind is a fruitful career.
Károly György Rada was born on June 9, 1936 in Győr. He graduated from the Pencis High School in Pannonhalmi, and was then admitted to the Chemistry Department of Eötvös Loránd University. He left Hungary in 1956. He graduated from Oxford University and received his Ph.D. In 1962-1963, he worked at the University of California (Berkeley) with Nobel Prize laureate Professor Melvin Calvin.
Between 1964 and 1984 he was a research fellow and lecturer in biochemistry at Merton College, Oxford, and between 1988 and 1996 he was head of the Medical Research Council's Department of Biochemistry and Clinical Magnetic Resonance. He is credited with the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
From 1991 to 1996 he was Head of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, and from 1996 to 2003 he was President of the UK Medical Research Council. His research activities focused on enzyme regulation, bioenergetics and the biochemistry of the organism in relation to human diseases, especially heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
From 2001 to 2003, he was President of the National Cancer Institute in London, and from 2005 to 2008, he was Head of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford. In 2005, he was the founder and until 2010, President of the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium. He played an important role in promoting scientific cooperation and exchange of expertise between Singapore and Hungary. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Chairman of the Biomedical Council of the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
Since 1980 he has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and between 1984 and 2003 he was Professor of Molecular Cardiology at the British Heart Foundation.
He was a member of the European Academy and since 2010 an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Twelve universities, including the University of Debrecen and Semmelweis University, have selected him for honorary doctorates. Since 2023, he has been the head of the President's Personal Scientific Advisor at the Hungarian Research Network HUN-REN.
Early in his career, he studied the structure and function of enzymes and membranes using fluorescent probes. He was a pioneer in the application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to the human body. Author of more than eight hundred publications. As Ars Poetica put it, he put it this way: “A completely new approach is needed so that different professions not only work together, but also think together about solving the greatest problems of humanity.”
He has received many international awards.
In 2011, he was awarded the Semmelweis Budapest Prize. The prize can be awarded to a foreign scientist who has shown internationally recognized results and is active in the field of biomedical research, and whose performance is worthy of the spirit of the university of the same name. It is also required that the research of the laureate should benefit humanity and show a new way of understanding living nature.
During his career, he was awarded the Colworth Medal (1969), the British Heart Foundation Gold Medal (1982), the Buchanan Medal of the Royal Society (1987), and the Order of the British Empire (1993). Secondly. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2000, in 2006 he was awarded the Medal of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences, in 2013 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the BioSpectrum Asia Pacific Awards, in 2016 he was awarded the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, and in 2018 he was awarded the Hungarian Corvin Chain.
