“I had wonderful life, I lived eternity in each second of my life” (M. R. Štefánik)
Ladislav Kováč was born on April 4, 1932. He comes from a mason‘s family of Liptov region. As a major self-formation milestone of his youth he considers the opportunity of cleaning the library, which was devastated and in ruins after the war. There he had the first chance to encounter philosophical works that formed his own thinking not inclined towards communist ideology. After the grammar school he studied biochemistry at the Charles University, where he stayed further 3 years to obtain a Candidate of Sciences (PhD) degree. From 1956 he worked at the Comenius University in Bratislava, where he led his own research, being later on nominated for Nobel Prize. Since not being a party member, during the communism he had difficulties to travel abroad; but finally, at the end of 1960s he managed to leave with his family to the USA for a one-year research stay. He returned back to Czechoslovakia in times of upcoming normalization. His life turned upside down: from a world known scientist he was suddenly limited and got restrictions to do his research activities. He found a job of biochemist in a Psychiatric Sanatorium in Pezinok, where he stayed for 7 years. Afterwards he worked within the research of livestock at the branch of Slovak Academy of Sciences in Ivanka pri Dunaji. During the Velvet Revolution, just for one year, he became the first Minister of Education. Because he desired to lead his own research, he began working at the Department of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Comenius University in Bratislava, where he works until present as a professor emeritus.