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A historian resides within Miklós himself

dr. Edit András - art historian

As he once expressed it, in this manner, his social life as well as his sources of information came to him. Perhaps art historians came into play because a historian resides within Miklós himself. Beyond the fact that he is Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences at Rockefeller University, with the conclusion of his active laboratory work, he began occupying himself with the history of science, and within that expansive field, with the history of the politics of science during the Socialist era. Since he had translated key texts of Soviet science from Russian to Hungarian early in his career, he knew the field inside out and he possessed an understanding of the scientific trends and the ways in which they were affected by political developments of the time. In fact, it was this political interference in scientific matters that was one of the factors inducing him to leave Hungary in 1965. His experiences as a young scientist in Hungary have come together in his research on Lysenko, Lepeshinskaya and Erwin Bauer, efforts that are not only pioneering in the history of science, but also in the history of the sovjetization of cultural and scientific life.

(Miklós Müller Oral History. Part 7: Becoming a Science Historian)
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2020-07-07