Google's orange homage to Albert Szent-Györgyi. Who?

"Think boldly, don't be afraid of making mistakes, don't miss small details, keep your eyes open, and be modest in everything except your aims." "

That was the advice Albert Szent-Gyorgyi is said to have offered his biographer Ralph Moss. It was a creed he exemplified during a remarkable life that is being honored in a Google Doodle today.

The historical entry which normally accompanies mention of Szent-Gyorgyi has to do with his discovery of vitamin C, a prodigious feat that earned him the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. That wasn't all. Research he carried out on muscular contraction is credited with revolutionizing the field of muscle research.

But Szent-Gyorgyi also carved out a second career as an intrepid anti-fascist fighter in the resistance during World War II. In 1944, the Gestapo arrested Szent-Gyorgyi, who was sent by his government on a covert mission to make contact with the Allies. At the time, Hungary was allied with the Axis Powers. Szent-Gyorgyi somehow managed to escape his house arrest and then spent the remainder of the war eluding his pursuers. He emigrated to the United States in 1947.

Why serve up the orange homage to Szent-Gyorgy today? Guessing the Googlers is a fool's errand but the folks at SearchEngineWatch do note that flu season is right around the bend.

The Albert Szent-Gyorgyi papers
Nobel Prize entry for Albert Szent-Gyorgyi