His time in America has been positively tranquil compared to the lifetime
he lived through in Eastern Europe. Born in Hungary, Dr. Kaley longed for a
medical career to follow in the footsteps of his father, a noted
otolaryngologist and university professor. The Nazis triggered a gruesome
interruption in those plans by sending him to Bor, a concentration camp in
Yugoslavia where only 600 of the 6000 inmates survived hard labor in the
mines and on the railroad, he relates. By war’s end, Dr. Kaley had escaped
the Nazis on a forced march to Germany and spent several weeks as a
Yugoslavian partisan under Tito. Having crossed to the Russian side, he
finally made his way to Romania and then Budapest, his home.
“Some of my close relatives died in Auschwitz and others were sent to
Bergen Belsen, but miraculously, all of my immediate family survived,” Dr.
Kaley says in voice so low, the listener feels his reluctance to remind the
gods of his good fortune. After returning to Budapest, he completed two
years of medical school at Pazmany University, followed by a third year at
Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Then came a decision that may have
made him what he is today. Certain that his future lay in America and able
to wrangle a visa to the U.S., he boarded a ship alone and nearly penniless,
rather than finishing school in Europe. But with no way to come up with
records, Dr. Kaley was not accepted to any American medical school.
He turned to college instead, and after receiving a B.S. in biology at
Columbia University (1950), was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean
War. A severe knee injury left him with something to remember, but in the
end, the Army was his salvation. Dr. Kaley used the GI Bill to earn an M.S.
in physiology from New York University and a Ph.D. in experimental
pathology. Although his post-doc fellowship at NYU had been in pathology, he
decided that a career in physiology was the better choice.
This is how Edward Messina, Ph.D., ’73, professor of physiology and one
of Kaley’s first students, feels about his chairman: “Gabe Kaley has been my
teacher, mentor, boss and friend for over 30 years. He is a remarkable
person in many ways. Most people don’t know what he had to overcome when he
first arrived in the United States with less than $20 in his pocket. His
instinct for science and his dedication to purpose have all contributed to
his successes as a person and scientist. Those who know him well are not
surprised that at this stage in his life he is one of the most distinguished
physiologists in the United States.”
Ah, but does he regret not finishing medical school? Shaking his head to
reinforce the right answer he replies, “There are satisfactions derived
through a long career in science that far outweigh what I imagine I would
have accomplished as an M.D. … The pressures now in science are greater than
ever. Remaining creative is a full-time job and I relish it. As my
biochemistry teacher Albert Szentgyorgyi, who won the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine said, ‘A good scientist has to see what everybody
sees and think what nobody else has thought…’”
“How a problem is solved depends on the talent and style of the
scientist. History is made by prominent people, and science advances the
same way-through individual accomplishments. Nobody knows what will happen
in the foreseeable future. Everything is possible, and anything that can be
done will be done. For my generation the great sorrow is only that we won’t
see the great advances that will undoubtedly be made.”
In the meantime, life treats Dr. Kaley well and so do his colleagues. It
is common knowledge that the entire faculty in physiology returns like bees
to the department conference room with provisions at lunchtime. Speculation
put forth by outsiders ranges from snobbishness to just wanting to please
Dr. Kaley. The real reason is, according to good authority, they just like
having lunch together. What a nice reflection on the chief who finessed it
that way.
