Árpád Janos Pusztai, PhD, one of the first scientists to raise concerns about the safety of genetically modified foods, died Dec 17, 2021, at home with his wife, Susan (Zsuzsa) Bardócz, at his side. He was 91.

Pusztai was born Sept 8, 1930, in Budapest, Hungary. He was a student of the high school Obudai Arpad Gimnazium. In 1953, he obtained a diploma in chemistry from the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. He worked for three years as an associate scientist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before the Hungarian revolution against Soviet control in 1956.

After the failed revolution, Pusztai escaped to a refugee camp in Austria and from there made his way to England. He completed his doctorate in biochemistry at the Lister Institute in London. In 1963, he was invited to join the Protein Research Department at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Pusztai worked at the Rowett Institute for the next 36 years, predominately studying plant lectins. During that time, he discovered glycoproteins in plants, authored more than 270 research papers, published three books and was considered an “internationally renowned expert on lectins.”