Paradise Lost
Beljanski was motivated purely by science. As a microbiologist, he wanted to use his abilities and knowledge to work to better the lives of his fellow human beings. He had a very simple yet systematic way of going about solving any problem with which he was faced: first—sifting through various biochemical experimental projects second—setting up and completing the inevitable next experiment third—discovering from research the biological questions needing answers.
Underlying it all was a commitment to constant, meticulous research. Hard work never discouraged Mirko. The two or three technicians working with him at their laboratory benches ran around day and night, each technician performing a vital operation in the piece of work being studied. This buzz of activity irritated his colleagues who scoffed at it, confusing passion for one’s work with opportunism.
Mirko Beljanski was not an opportunist. Rather, he was a man totally consumed by his research endeavors. He was driven to understand nature and to make an original contribution for the benefit of humankind, leaving a positive mark by advancing his ideas. Most demanding of himself, he also demanded a great deal from his team members. He was often short on patience while rushing toward the completion of a goal. Because he did not take the time to gossip with colleagues who seemed to discuss at length how to recreate the world, Mirko made almost no friends among them. His lack of availability due to his devotion to his work was misunderstood. Instead, his colleagues interpreted Mirko’s absence as aloofness or pretension.
While their assessment was incorrect, it is true that Mirko was not very approachable. From his Yugoslavian peasant origins, he retained a concrete mentality and did not enjoy the theorizing so beloved by French intellectuals. For such aloof-like behavior, Mirko Beljanski was rejected by coworkers, and this resulted in the failure of his colleagues to afford him the appropriate degree of recognition he deserved.
In 1952, Mirko’s much loved mentor, Michel Macheboeuf, Ph.D., chief of his Pasteur Institute department, passed away suddenly. Dr. Macheboeuf had been exposed to poisonous gas during World War I, which resulted in chronic lung damage. From time to time, he had experienced debilitating episodes involving one of the lobes of his lungs. The lung’s weakness eventually led to Macheboeuf developing a bronchial lung cancer, which finally killed him during the summer of 1952.
To replace Macheboeuf as director of the Department of Cellular Biochemistry, the Pasteur’s governing board named Jacques Monod, Ph.D. Mirko, Monique, and other researchers who had worked for the late Macheboeuf, were integrated into Dr. Monod’s expanded team of scientists. But there was a problem: Jacques Monod and Mirko Beljanski didn’t like each other at all.
The conflict between them was ongoing. Very aware of his own personal image, Monod was not interested in Mirko’s investigatory strengths and did not appreciate the researcher’s straightforwardness. Simultaneously, Mirko failed to take into account the media savvy of his new boss, whom he believed to be more excited by the limelight of public relations than by the study of science. These two strong and opposing egos were simply not made for mutual cooperation, and they often clashed. Shortly after he had been named as head of the Department of Cellular Biochemistry, Monod asked Beljanski, as they passed each other in the hall, “What do you think? Should I accept the offer to head our department?”
Jacques Monod craved praise and approval from everyone at the Pasteur. Satisfaction for his ego was everything for Dr. Monod. Dr. Beljanski did nothing to feed that satisfaction.
He replied to his new boss, “But you already have accepted the position, so why ask my opinion?”
At first shocked by the answer to his question, Monod turned off all style and charm and went on his way without comment. However, he did not let it rest. The new director related the occurrence between him and Beljanski to his colleagues, and they let it be known that Monod hated Beljanski all the more for his undiplomatic response and would refuse him his scientific backing.
Any observer would judge that these were two temperaments that only the love of science could bring together, but their conceptions of science had vastly different values. The boss wanted it to service him in his career; the worker wanted to dedicate his life to its service. From the first moments of their first meeting, any civil dialogue between them became practically impossible.
Alleviating the Tension
Since Monod thrived exceedingly well as a scientist-politicianpublicist with lots of connections to the political, commercial, and international community, greater amounts of budget money came along with his appointment as department head. He set about using the new money to transform and modernize the old laboratory facilities. Structural plans were drawn up for the department, contractors were hired, and the staff was then exposed to many months of building reconstruction. Each day they faced dust, debris, construction noise, and supply shortages. Worthwhile work became impossible for everyone.
The scientists in the cellular biochemistry department left for other laboratories in Europe, Canada, Australia, or the U.S. Early in 1956, Beljanski was offered a two-year scholarship at New York University (NYU) to undertake research with Severo Ochoa, Ph.D. Because the personality conflict had not improved between Dr. Beljanski and Dr. Monod, acceptance of Dr. Ochoa’s invitation was encouraged by Director Monod. He preferred Mirko and Monique to be gone from the Pasteur Institute for as long as possible—perhaps permanently.
The early to mid-1950s was a very exciting time for biologists and biochemists. The structure of DNA (which will be explained later) was discovered in 1953 and everyone, it seemed, turned their attention to this breakthrough. Many notions that today are routinely taught were as yet unknown at that time. The greatest challenge for biochemists and/or biologists in those years of the 1950s was mapping the genetic code. Such mapping keenly interested both Dr. Ochoa and Dr. Beljanski, and part of that process was uncovering the mechanisms that had to do with protein synthesis.
Protein synthesis is an exceedingly important but very complex chemical process, for it creates protein, which is the main building block of cell structure. During that period, very little was understood about the functioning of protein synthesis, and many biochemists devoted much of their time researching the hidden mechanisms through which cells create proteins. Drs. Ochoa and Beljanski were no different. For two years Beljanski, with his wife always at his side, performed experiments to understand how amino acids are selected during the natural process of combining with each other to become peptides. Amino acids are the basic unit or building blocks of proteins and when linked together in chains form a polypeptide. When the amino acids from different parts of the chain interact with each other, the polypeptide chain takes on a unique shape forming a protein.
It was an extremely difficult task to determine what factors governed specific combinations of amino acids and/or peptides during protein synthesis, but it was a job that Professor Ochoa asked his new associate to accept. Mirko did so with enthusiasm. Together they conducted experiments to incorporate radioactive amino acids into the systems of living organisms. Then they reported their observations. As coinvestigators and co-authors they eventually published three scientific papers together.
Dr. Ochoa was a charming, courteous, refined man and always pleasant. The three scientists respected each other and got along exceedingly well. Ochoa appreciated the enthusiasm the two young French visitors brought to their work. As a result of his work with RNA and its relationship to peptides in protein synthesis, Mirko Beljanski was recognized by his colleagues. He received the 1960 Charles-Leopold Mayer Prize from the French Academy of Sciences for valuable work performed during the preceding years in molecular biology. Dr. Ochoa himself was looking for an enzyme that he eventually found and called
polynucleotide phosphorylase
(PNPase). Ochoa went on to show that this enzyme was capable of synthesizing RNAs in a test tube. It was for these discoveries in biochemistry that he later became famous (having received a Nobel Prize in 1959), and the two Beljanskis used his findings to perfect their own experiments.
The time spent by Ochoa and Beljanski researching in areas of common interest was quite productive. They recorded a body of knowledge which the world-wide scientific community still utilizes. They set precedents which have not been overturned.
Back to Paris
During the summer of 1956, Monique was expecting the young couple’s first child, Sylvie. While the mother-to-be found herself forced to remain away from working at NYU, Mirko continued to experience satisfaction and success with his biochemical investigations in the Ochoa laboratory. After a year of working together, Dr. Ochoa suggested that Mirko settle in the U.S. permanently and become an American. But the Beljanskis felt they belonged back in France. They wanted to raise their children there, and Mirko was very attached to Monique’s parents. In 1958, when Monique found that she was expecting their second child, Boris, the couple decided that they wanted their baby to be born and their children raised in France. Therefore at the end of Mirko’s twoyear fellowship, the family returned to France.
Little did they realize just how important their decision to return home would prove to be. Due to differences in the way research is financed in the United States as compared to France, it seems unlikely that Mirko’s exhaustive and complex investigations could have been accomplished in the United States at all.
In France, a CNRS researcher is a bit like a civil servant: he has job security and salary security which allows him to carry out in-depth research without the constraints of having to first prove its profitability. In contrast, the American system of scientific research requires an investigator to dedicate a significant part of his time to obtaining funding each year. This creates the incentive for rapid results but does not allow the researcher a period of time for reflection. That ability to reflect on research results was key for Beljanski.
After two years of working at NYU, Dr. Beljanski and his wife returned to resume work in the newly constructed Pasteur Institute facilities. While the couple was glad to be back home in France, they had little enthusiasm about coming back to Monod’s department.
On his return, Beljanski wished to pursue the investigations he had begun in the United States, while Monod wanted him to study a particular enzyme, a biochemical subject to which his laboratory was dedicated because it had to do with the genetic aspect of DNA. Beljanski refused because his findings were all in contradiction with such a scheme. Upset at hearing Beljanski’s refusal to investigate the enzyme in question, Dr. Monod, in a fit of anger, declared to Beljanski, “But everyone works on my ideas!”
Mirko responded without hesitation, “Exactly! That’s already plenty of people, so let me go my own way!”
Mirko and Monique stood their ground, and Monod finally allowed the two Beljanskis to do what they wanted at their laboratory bench; however, from that day forward he no longer took any interest in the discoveries the Beljanskis were making.
Monod was a difficult yet brilliant man. A testimony to Monod’s brilliance came in 1965 when he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Fran
ç
ois Jacob, Ph.D., and André Lwoff, Ph.D., for work concerning the control of the genetic expression in DNA (the part of DNA that has to do with the pattern of physical characteristics of the human body).
The ideas of Monod and Beljanski were in conflict over whether changes in DNA came only from mutations (alterations in the primary structure of the DNA), or whether, as Beljanski asserted, without contradicting the role of mutations, the environment could influence DNA functioning in ways other than through mutation. Beljanski’s opinion was that environmental substances could interfere with the ability of DNA to replicate itself properly which would influence the functioning of DNA but not cause mutation; Monod did not believe this was so. Beljanski also thought, in contrast to Monod, that RNA could influence the functioning of DNA in various ways, rather than just DNA affecting the functioning of RNA. At that time, the idea of influencing DNA other than through mutations was considered to be an insult to the dogma of DNA supremacy, a dogma which was championed by Monod.
Nowadays, many scientists are aware of the response a cell’s substances have to its surrounding. Yet Mirko Beljanski was one of the first, if not
the
first, to give a molecular definition and concrete examples of the role the environment plays in DNA functioning improperly and that phenomena’s relationship to cancer causation.
Monod concepts, however, were championed by the scientific community around the world and prejudiced the minds of scientists for a full generation after he published his findings. Jacques Monod was also the political darling of the French nation, especially after he brought the Nobel Prize to France; what he declared as truth became the accepted dogma for the nation. Scientifically, Beljanski and his ideas were at complete odds with Monod, a conflict that would haunt Beljanski for the remainder of his life.
The discord between the scientific ideas of Dr. Monod and Dr. Beljanski was not helped by the constant strife created by the deep-seated personality clash between the two men. As Monique recounted during our New York City meeting on Thursday, June 24, 2005, “Mirko would meditate about his work and was never quick to jump to conclusions, as do some brilliant people. Jacques Monod was brilliant, but tended to be closed to ideas that differed from his own. My husband was totally different from him. Their personalities clashed often. Monod was distrustful of Mirko; Mirko felt impatient with Monod’s inflated ego.” Monique spoke about her husband in a frank and candid way; she used a respectful tone of voice and a mildness of expression as if almost in awe. She continued, “Mirko Beljanski hated the word
genius
, and denied the term for himself. He declared instead, ‘I am no genius and hardly possess much intelligence. If I find success from my investigations, it’s because I am a hard worker, stay persistent in my efforts, and possess a free mind that remains open to ideas no matter how outlandish they may seem.’”