József Szejtli (1933-2004) died 20 years ago today, but his impact on development of cyclodextrin utilization is unquestionable. Crini et al. wrote about him: “Szejtli played a fundamental role as eminent scientist and visionary. Since the mid-1950s, he has devoted his life to cyclodextrins. Professor Szejtli knew virtually everything about them, publishing more than 500 publications, including 106 patent applications. He was also an ambitious entrepreneur, creating in 1989 CycloLab Ltd., an independent company totally devoted to cyclodextrins. Professor Szejtli is internationally recognized for his outstanding contribution to the cyclodextrin science and considered to be the Godfather of Cyclodextrins.”
His main achievements were:
- refuted the misleading toxicity results which was one of the main hurdles of the further development especially in the field of pharmaceutical and food applications;
- initialized industrial production resulting in price drop paving the way to industrial application;
- organized the 1st International Cyclodextrin Symposium (1981, Budapest); this tradition is still continued: the latest symposium was held in this year in France;
- founded CycloLab (1991), the first in the word company devoted merely to the research and development of cyclodextrins;
- established and published Cyclodextrin News (1986-2004) which still exist in a form of blog (Cyclodextrin News.com) informing the >500 followers about the latest news.
To keep his memory CycloLab established the Szejtli prize awarded to young scientists achieved outstanding contribution in cyclodextrin research and application: Keichi Motoyama (2014), Tamer Uyar (2016), Nicolas Blancheman (2018) Aurore Fraix (2020), Angela Scala (2022), Sophie Beren (2024).
His works are fundamental and often cited even today (the number of citations in 2018-2024 period ~4000 (Researchgate)).
Crini G., Fenyvesi, É., Szente, L. (2020) Professor Szejtli: The Godfather of Cyclodextrins. In: Crini, G., Forurmentin, S., Lichtfouse, E. (eds.) The History of Cyclodextrins. Springer, New York. pp. 96-155
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030493073