Ábel Lajtha, renowned neurochemist, brain research professor, academic, founding member of the Friends of Hungary Foundation, died at the age of 102 in New York.

He was born in Budapest in 1922, his father László Lajtha was a Kossuth Prize-winning composer and folk music researcher. Ábel Lajtha completed his schooling in Budapest. In 1945, he obtained his doctorate at the Pázmány Péter University. In 1946-47, he was an  assistant lecturer with Albert Szent-Györgyi, with whom he worked again in the United States. Lajtha was the founder and later the president of the American Neurochemical Society, and from 1976 he was editor and then editor-in-chief of the journal Neurochemical Research. In 1971, he was appointed research professor of psychiatry at the New York University Medical Center.

In 2002, he received the Pro Scientia Hungarica medal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in 2005 he received the Bernard Haber award, and in 2016 he was awarded the middle cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit.  Author of more than 700 scientific articles, and around 40 Hungarian scholarship holders worked in his laboratory.

"As a student of Albert Szent-Györgyi, I value scientific results the most, wealth is not a real value," testified Ábel Lajtha.

A previous interview with Ábel Lajtha can be read on the Hungary Today page https://hungarytoday.hu/always-one-who-wanted-to-help-support-others-interview-with-neuroscientist-henry-sershen-about-professor-abel- lajtha/