Mirko Beljanski was born in 1923 into a rural family in the northernmost province of Serbia, which was then part of Yugoslavia. His was the large farming village of Turija and its inhabitants were devoted to their corn crops, their pigs, geese, and goats. Mirko Beljanski’s father, Milan, worked as a mechanic in the repairing of his neighbors’ farm equipment. One of Milan’s mechanical talents was the ability to drill fresh water wells for the townspeople, who at the time still had no running water. Electricity came to Turija many years after Mirko had left the place permanently.
The weather in northern Serbia was extremely harsh with freezing cold winters and searing hot summers. Such weather, coupled with the seemingly constant ongoing political struggles that have plagued this region from time immemorial, left his fellow townsfolk to be at times unhopeful about life. His neighbors’ negative attitude irritated the boy. He was born with a positive outlook and wanted to do great things in life.
Even at age seven, a thirst for independence and productivity grew in him. Brimming with strong self-discipline, the young Beljanski refused to accept imposed authority or collective discipline. Mirko wanted knowledge, and he recognized that schoolbook learning would allow him to follow his own path out of the limiting Serbian lifestyle and mindset. He put all of his energy into achieving an education. He sought advice from elders and planned with them how he might accomplish his goal.
From his village of six thousand hard-working people, three children were selected for a scholarship to travel to the nearest town twenty-two miles away where there was a small elementary school in combination with a high school. The three Turija students, all thirsty for learning, took a test to see if they were smart enough to warrant their living away from home and attending school. Mirko, eleven years of age, passed and was told he was to leave his family to go live with his Uncle Mitia and his wife in the distant town of Novi-Sad, the capitol of the region. The young Mirko wanted that potential education with all his being. He must have felt ecstatic, knowing he had a chance to make his dream come true.
The boy traveled the required twenty-two miles to Novi-Sad by carriage in the fall of 1934. He resided in his relatives’ small, whitecob house consisting of only two clean rooms, one for his uncle and aunt and the other for Mirko and his grandmother. His aunt milked two cows in a small cow shed out back to help the family finances. Mirko’s job was to deliver the milk to neighboring houses before the start of each day’s classes.
For the first few months in Novi-Sad, the lad found it difficult being apart from his immediate family. Compared to his schoolmates, he felt clumsy and was ashamed that he spoke with a country accent. He was not well travelled; he felt he had poor manners and had no book learning. But what he lacked in sophistication he made up for with an unshakeable will and an uncanny ability to adapt. He was a tireless worker which helped him prevail even when difficult circumstances presented themselves— and they often did in his life.
Once he settled into his schooling, he quickly became well-respected among his teachers. Mirko loved school and was a fast learner. He also got along well with his aunt, uncle, and grandmother. Over the next ten years, Mirko realized that Turija was not a place to which he ever wanted to return. When he returned to visit, he found the time there endless. In 1942 Mirko successfully passed his Serbian baccalaureate test (the test allowing his graduation from school), and it was just in the nick of time, too. His high school was closed down a couple of days after his graduation because World War II was raging throughout Europe.
In addition to World War II, civil conflict struck Yugoslavia. The entire country was now at war with itself while at the same time trying, and failing, to protect itself from Nazi Germany. Loyalties were divided and tensions ran high. While refusing to be political, different cliques of his friends pushed Mirko to join either with the Yugoslavian partisans, who fought the Germans, or the monarchists who feared communism more than the German invaders and who were attacking the partisans.
He held back from joining either side.
Mirko hesitated—he never had been interested in politics—but he finally decided to enlist with the partisans and spent several months traveling clandestinely from farm to farm, relaying messages. He was required to attend political meetings even though he disliked his situation and the way things were being run. His partisan buddies looked with disfavor on Mirko’s reserve, especially his lack of enthusiasm regarding some military maneuvers. Additionally, he cherished his freedom of speech and sometimes dared to criticize the “higher ups.”
The atmosphere around him was getting tense. By a stroke of good luck, his situation changed. In 1944, Mirko was selected, along with several other Yugoslavian students, to receive a fellowship to continue his scholarship abroad; it was to be either in Moscow or Paris. At a meeting in Belgrade where these promising students assembled to learn the location of their fellowship studies, Mirko found himself in an unlikely group of compatriots: those who did not own a winter coat. Those students who were totally unprepared to face the harsh Moscow winters without warm clothing were automatically assigned to study in Paris, a choice which suited Mirko just fine. Paris had always been his preference. Thus his limited material possessions, along with his humble background, for once helped give him a great opportunity. And so it was that on a rainy day in the autumn of 1945, Mirko Beljanski arrived on the streets of Paris.
Mirko, the Student
Taking shelter in local student hostels, young Mirko Beljanski settled into a scholar’s life in Paris. Registration for college took place at the Sorbonne, where Mirko intended to obtain his doctoral degree in science. To participate in classes, he was required to learn French and to speak and read it fluently. Money was scarce; there was barely enough earned cash to rent a room, eat one good meal a day, and buy books. While he did experience his first romances, the young man preferred to remain on his own in order to fully dedicate himself to work in the sciences. Mirko had a great love of learning. He did well in chemistry but found his passion in biology.
He completed his undergraduate degree in 1947, intending to start work on his doctoral thesis right away. Before starting as a graduate student, however, a letter arrived from Mirko’s mother. She wrote him asking that he return home. She needed Mirko to come home and help the family by resuming work as a farmer. His mother didn’t, and I’m sure couldn’t, understand what was important to her son. To her, the income he could gain from milking a few more cows far outweighed any book learning. But Mirko had other ideas. He knew he wanted to be a scientist and did not wish to leave school, but since his academic scholarship had run out and after a brief stint at the Biology Institute on Pierre Curie Street in Paris, he decided to fulfill his obligation to return to his family and his Yugoslavian village.
The budding scientist was never destined to return to farm life. Before he returned home, a new opportunity presented itself. He was able to assist with the Beljanski family’s finances by working for six months in a laboratory in Yugoslavia’s major city, Belgrade. Then luck smiled on him again. He received another Sorbonne scholarship which allowed him to return to Paris. This good fortune was followed quickly by an International Affairs academic scholarship which allowed him to start his doctoral thesis. He joined the Pasteur Institute, and Professor Michel Macheboeuf, Ph.D., became Beljanski’s supervisor for his doctoral thesis. Reports suggest that the director was impressed with the young, hard-working student. The elder scientist knew he needed a meticulous researcher to carry on the difficult work he was doing on antibiotics. Beljanski had an affinity for biology already, so we can only assume he took up the work his mentor offered to him with gusto.
Initial Research of the Young Biochemist
Dr. Macheboeuf was head of the investigative laboratory in the Department of Cellular Biology at the Pasteur Institute. Beljanski began his student training under the direct supervision of this highly intelligent, empathetic, and kind professor of biochemistry. In 1948, Dr. Macheboeuf suggested that his student investigate the origin of bacterial resistance against various antibiotics for his Ph.D. thesis. At the time, streptomycin, a potent killer of pathological organisms (commonly called pathogens), was the dramatic new antibiotic coming out of World War II and was just beginning to be used by medical consumers.
As one of its most vital applications, streptomycin has been among the most effective antibiotics for putting active pulmonary tuberculosis into remission or even curing it. But the natural resistance of tubercle bacilli (the bacteria that causes tuberculosis) sometimes leaves behind thousands of organisms totally unaffected by streptomycin; consequently, the antibiotic often must be combined and administered with another antibiotic, thus allowing different mechanisms of action to attack the tuberculosis infection.
This sort of problem occupied Beljanski’s mental efforts and laboratory skills during the four years that he worked toward his doctorate, which he acquired in 1951. The young biochemical researcher carried out Professor Macheboeuf’s recommendations and went even further. He proved that several antibiotics used were capable of inducing modifications in RNA. (RNA is one of three major components essential for all known life forms, along with DNA and proteins).
His laboratory notes record that several species of streptomycinresistant mutant bacteria tend to accumulate certain types of RNA during a given period. Numerous published papers came out of his research not only on streptomycin but also on other antibiotics-resistant organisms.
Upon gaining his doctoral degree in molecular biology, which is a sub-science of biochemistry concerned with understanding interactions between the various systems of a cell, Mirko Beljanski was drawn to the then new profession of microbiology—the study of even smaller living units, primarily bacteria, viruses, and fungi. His preliminary studies allowed him to select the methods of analysis which were to become essential in his subsequent research.
Once again he conferred with his mentor, Professor Macheboeuf. Macheboeuf recognized Beljanski’s courage, imagination, and persistent nature; he understood how Mirko was quite different from the other young graduates. In place of philosophizing or intellectualizing, the new Ph.D. preferred working alone, driven by an inner need to sculpt and establish his own beliefs and find his own truths. Beljanski found great rapport with Macheboeuf and was overjoyed to share the byline with him on four published scientific papers or any other kind of work under his mentor’s direct supervision.
From the beginning of his research career, Mirko Beljanski was a man connected to experimentation, from his laboratory animals to his lab benches where various microscopes, test tubes, Bunsen burners, and beakers were strewn about ready for use.
Starting a New Life
In 1951 as Mirko completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry, he also had other things on his mind. With a new doctoral diploma and a French paycheck to take home, he decided to propose marriage to the French girl he had been dating, the young and beautiful Mademoiselle Monique Lucas. Very much in love, she accepted and the couple was married in Yugoslavia.
The bride’s middle-income French parents set them up in a pretty little apartment on a Paris back street, not too far from the Pasteur Institute. Mirko wanted his young wife to be by his side as much as possible, so he persuaded the bride to enroll in a school for laboratory and bacteriology technicians. Monique passed the two-year course with honors. She became newly certified as a laboratory assistant in Professor Michel Macheboeuf ’s laboratory and entered the CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research. CNRS has been a long-time research partner of the Pasteur Institute and is now a governmentfunded research organization under the administrative authority of France's Ministry of Research. That same year, Mirko also joined the CNRS as a researcher.
That first working arrangement for them was the beginning of over a quarter-century of joint research undertakings. Mutual respect for each other lasted for the rest of their lives, united in work that was pure joy, a symbol of their togetherness, and the source of many intellectual adventures.
At the Pasteur, Beljanski continued his investigations into antibiotics and genetics. The newlyweds worked intensively on experiments involving bacterial resistance to antibiotics. They cooperated well together as laboratory colleagues. Beljanski was a man possessed, and during several interviews with Monique, she recounted to me some of their more interesting adventures. Once, Mirko awoke Monique at 3:00 a.m., dragged her out of bed and into the cool Paris streets so that they could dig some Petri dishes out of the laboratory garbage at the Pasteur Institute. They had thrown them away the day before because they thought the experiment in those dishes had failed. But in the middle of the night, Mirko wondered if all of the bacterial colonies in this particular lab test could have, in fact, mutated instead of only making the expected isolated, random changes. Monique and Mirko climbed the fences surrounding the Institute, ran to the trash bins in order to beat the garbage collector, and found that, in fact, every cell had mutated. These petri dishes became important to later research because Mirko was able to turn back the same type of mutations with a specific chemical taken from blood. Ultimately, all this (and much more) led Beljanski down the research path to his discoveries of cancerous DNA.
Here again was another gigantic “what if” in the story of his amazing discoveries. What if Beljanski had
not
awoken that early morning years ago and insisted his wife accompany him on his trash-sifting adventure? He might have found a path to his ground-breaking research another way, but he might not have, just as he could have elected to stay on the farm and raise geese and pigs instead of giving the world a potentially viable way to handle one of the most deadly and feared diseases on the planet.