Ján Vilček
| Jan Vilček | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
June 17, 1933 Bratislava, Slovakia (formerly Czechoslovakia) |
| Residence | New York City |
| Fields | microbiology, immunology |
| Institutions | Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, New York University School of Medicine |
| Alma mater | Comenius University in Bratislava |
| Notable awards | National Medal of Technology and Innovation (2012) |
| Spouse | Marica Vilcek |
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Website Love and Science. A Memoir. |
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Jan T. Vilček M.D., Ph.D. (born June 17, 1933) is a biomedical scientist, educator, inventor and philanthropist. He is a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine, and Chairman and CEO of The Vilcek Foundation. Vilček, a native of Bratislava, Slovakia, (then part of Czechoslovakia) received his M.D. degree from Comenius University Medical School, Bratislava in 1957; and his Ph.D. in Virology from the Institute of Virology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1962. In 1964, Jan Vilček, with his wife Marica, defected from Communist Czechoslovakia during a three-day visit to Vienna. In 1965, the Vilčeks immigrated to the United States, and have since lived in New York City. Vilček devoted his scientific career to studies of soluble mediators that regulate the immune system (cytokines), including interferon and tumor necrosis factor (TNF).
Vilcek was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, to a middle class secular Jewish family. His mother, Friderika Fischer, was born to a German-speaking family in Budapest, Hungary. She moved with her family to Bratislava where she finished medical school, married Jan’s father, Julius Vilcek, and became an ophthalmologist. Jan Vilcek grew up speaking three languages (Slovak, German and Hungarian). During the Second World War, his family was persecuted because of their Jewish heritage. To protect him from deportation to a concentration camp, in 1942 his parents placed Vilcek in an orphanage run by Catholic nuns. From mid-1944 through the end of the war in 1945, Jan Vilcek and his mother were hidden by a brave Slovak family in a remote village, while his father joined an uprising against the Nazis. After the defeat of Nazi Germany the family was reunited and moved back to Bratislava.
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