Ambros met Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday, and later told Poland's PAP news agency that obtaining citizenship would be a tribute to his family.
“For me, it would be a way to honor my father, my aunt, their parents, and all those people who fought and survived so that I could exist today,” Ambros said. “In this way I would like to pay tribute to them.”
Ambros, an American molecular biologist of Polish descent, said his father, who was deported during World War II to Nazi Germany as a forced laborer, was his only direct link to Poland.
“My only connection to Poland was my father—he was the one who came from Poland,” Ambros said, explaining that many immigrants in the United States in the 1950s did not pass their native language on to their children.
He said 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.”
“That is why I was so moved by the possibility that perhaps thanks to the Nobel Prize I could make some contribution to the development of Polish science and Poland’s position in the world,” he added.
Ambros, born on December 1, 1953, in Hanover, New Hampshire, shared the 2024 Nobel Prize with Gary Ruvkun for discoveries concerning microRNA, mechanisms regulating gene activity.
The work became a foundation of modern molecular biology and opened new possibilities in diagnosis and treatment.
Since February last year, Ambros has chaired the scientific council of the Polish Academy of Sciences’ (PAN) International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology.
On Monday afternoon, he also gave a lecture in Warsaw on the role of microRNA in post-transcriptional gene regulation.
(jh/gs)
Source: PAP
Click on the audio player above for a report by Michał Owczarek.