Štefan Kužela, PhD. (director of the Institute of Molecular Biology, Slovak Academy of Sciences and professor of biochemistry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava) died on March 9, 1994 by sudden heart failure. It was a great loss for Slovak culture. He was not a poet, he was a scientist, but he was creating new European vision of Slovak culture.
He was well-established researcher in world scientific community. As a student in 1964, he almost uncovered the role of cAMP in the cell, the finding for which Dr. Sutherland received the Nobel prize in 1971.
August 1968, Russian invasion of our country, and later communist persecutions slowed down his scientific career. It must have happened, because he made no compromise in questions of morality, human rights and dignity.
In 1989, when communist government was overthrown, he was intensively participating in healing of Slovak deformed reality. Unfortunately, he died just when he had a chance and conditions to fulfill his visions and to use his exceptional gifts.
Despite the fact that scientific career of Štefan Kužela was interrupted in 1970's by communist persecutions, he remained scientifically active and begun to organize unofficial seminars in his office at the Institute of Experimental Oncology, Slovak Academy of Sciences.
After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, he was enabled to teach at the Comenius University once again. He was also heading the Institute of Molecular Biology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, where he initiated so called Monday seminars.
Unfortunately, Štefan Kužela died in 1994 in the middle of his efforts to re-establish normality into Slovak twisted society.
Kužela lectures organized by the Departments of Biochemistry and Genetics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava are continuing this tradition. They remind us Štefan and the meaning of his lifework.
In 2008, we named a seminar room at the Department of Biochemistry to his honour.
We will never forget.
