Hungarian-born microbiologist’s name to be put on the Eiffel Tower!

The name of a Hungarian-born scientist who helped shape modern molecular biology will soon be engraved on one of the world’s most recognisable monuments. Ágnes Ullmann, an Erdély (Transylvania)-born microbiologist whose work laid key foundations in molecular genetics and immunology, has been selected as one of 72 female scientists to be honoured on the Eiffel Tower.

Hungarian scientist’s name on the Eiffel Tower

For more than a century, the tower’s first-floor frieze displayed the names of 72 eminent male scientists. Now, in an initiative led by the City of Paris, the Eiffel Tower operating company (SETE) and the association Femmes & Sciences, an equal number of women will be added in the same gold lettering and typography.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the move aims to “restore women to their rightful place” in the history of science and inspire future generations of girls to pursue careers in research and engineering.

From wartime Transylvania to the Pasteur Institute

Ullmann’s life story reads like a 20th-century European history lesson.

Born in 1927 in Szatmárnémeti (today Satu Mare, Romania) into a Hungarian Jewish family, she survived the Holocaust partly thanks to her schooling in Arad, Telex writes. As a teenager, she was inspired by Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters, a birthday gift that sparked a lifelong fascination with Louis Pasteur and microbiology.

After finishing school in the turbulent post-war years, she studied first in Cluj (Kolozsvár) and later at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, graduating in chemistry in 1949. She began her research career under the renowned Hungarian biochemist Brunó Straub.

However, science in 1950s Hungary was constrained by Soviet ideology and the rejection of genetics. Ullmann later described reading French microbiologist Jacques Monod’s criticism of these doctrines as a “revelation” that changed her career path.

Daring escape and scientific breakthroughs

Her eventual move to France required both courage and ingenuity.

After short research visits to Paris, Ullmann and her husband orchestrated a risky escape from Hungary in 1960, hiding in a caravan’s storage compartment to cross the border. Once in Paris, she joined the prestigious Pasteur Institute: the very institution she had dreamed of since childhood.