Nobel laureate Victor Ambros seeks Polish citizenship
Victor Ambros, the 2024 Nobel Prize winner in medicine, has submitted an application for Polish citizenship due to his family roots, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced.
"I have made all the appropriate decisions – soon our compatriot will formally be a Polish citizen," he said in a video recording posted on X on Thursday.
Tusk further reported that he met with Ambros, an American molecular biologist of Polish descent, on Monday.
"His father left Poland during World War II, but the awareness and memory of being Polish has always accompanied Victor Ambros," Tusk said in the recording.
According to the Institute of National Remembrance, the Nobel Prize winner's father was deported as a forced labourer to the Third Reich.
Tusk also said that Professor Ambros has "a magnificent plan" as he intends to bring to Poland "the most talented young scientists from around the world" and believes that Poland is one of the most attractive places in the world for science, especially for young scientists."
"And we will, of course, help him with that," Tusk added.
Ambros told PAP that he would like, owing to the Nobel Prize, to make some contribution to the development of Polish science and Poland’s position in the world. He also said that by seeking Polish citizenship he would like to pay tribute to his Polish ancestors, honour his father, his aunt and their parents, and all those people who fought and survived so that I could exist today.
Ambros also said that he had developed "enormous affection for the Polish nation, as well as real, deep admiration," recalling how his father described Poland as a country whose borders kept shifting on the map.
"Only later, especially in recent years, did I increasingly see how extraordinarily resilient the Polish nation has been, how it managed to survive the pressure of history and forces that wanted to annihilate it," he said. "Today it is stronger than ever."
Ambros was born on December 1, 1953, in Hanover, New Hampshire. He began his academic career at Harvard University and then moved to Dartmouth College. Since 2008, he has been associated with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he holds the position of Silverman Professor of Natural Sciences and Co-Director of the RNA Therapeutic Institute.
He shared the 2024 Nobel Prize with Gary Ruvkun for discoveries concerning microRNA, mechanisms regulating gene activity. This groundbreaking research became the foundation of modern molecular biology and opened up new possibilities in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, including rare and difficult-to-diagnose ones. (PAP)
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