From Cytometry to Cell Cycle—A Portrait of Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz (original) (raw)

As indicated by his somewhat elaborate Slavic name, Zbigniew Darzynkiewicz, a Polishborn American scientist, has very strong ties to Poland. In 1968, he escaped a communist regime and became a role model from foreign lands for a new democratic Poland. Still Polish scientists come regularly to his laboratory in Hawthorne, New York to learn science. The first democratic President of Poland, Lech Walesa, awarded him a gold medal for scientific achievements. He was also awarded the Polish Millennium Gold Award in recognition of research accomplishments which was also bestowed on other luminaries of Polish heritage, including Andrew Schally, Ludwik Gross, Hilary Koprowski and Zbigniew Brzezinski. He was also elected as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Krakow), and just recently, Polish film-makers have produced a movie "Anatomy of Success" that describes some of his achievements. Dr. Darzynkiewicz has an enormous bibliography. In the current total, he has authored over 450 original publications and over 100 chapters and reviews in books devoted to the subjects of cell growth, regulation of the cell cycle and apoptosis, and has either authored or edited numerous books. His publications have been cited over 20,000 times in the scientific literature. And yet, he still works seven days a week. At 9 a.m., even on Saturdays and Sundays, he is in his laboratory at Brander Cancer Research Institute. While a high school student, Dr. Darzynkiewicz was fascinated by quantum physics and by cosmology. He was planning to become a physicist. Yet, in communist Poland it was impossible to pursue this dream, so he entered, as if by default, a Medical School. Physics lost, but cell biology won. In his rare spare hours, he still reads books on general relativity, quantum mechanics and cosmology. Not surprisingly, he has introduced many physics-oriented ideas and approaches to cell biology.