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biology.
    He completed his undergraduate degree in 1947, intending to start work on his doctoral thesis right away. Before starting as a graduate student, however, a letter arrived from Mirko’s mother. She wrote him asking that he return home. She needed Mirko to come home and help the family by resuming work as a farmer. His mother didn’t, and I’m sure couldn’t, understand what was important to her son. To her, the income he could gain from milking a few more cows far outweighed any book learning. But Mirko had other ideas. He knew he wanted to be a scientist and did not wish to leave school, but since his academic scholarship had run out and after a brief stint at the Biology Institute on Pierre Curie Street in Paris, he decided to fulfill his obligation to return to his family and his Yugoslavian village.
    The budding scientist was never destined to return to farm life. Before he returned home, a new opportunity presented itself. He was able to assist with the Beljanski family’s finances by working for six months in a laboratory in Yugoslavia’s major city, Belgrade. Then luck smiled on him again. He received another Sorbonne scholarship which allowed him to return to Paris. This good fortune was followed quickly by an International Affairs academic scholarship which allowed him to start his doctoral thesis. He joined the Pasteur Institute, and Professor Michel Macheboeuf, Ph.D., became Beljanski’s supervisor for his doctoral thesis. Reports suggest that the director was impressed with the young, hard-working student. The elder scientist knew he needed a meticulous researcher to carry on the difficult work he was doing on antibiotics. Beljanski had an affinity for biology already, so we can only assume he took up the work his mentor offered to him with gusto.
     
    Initial Research of the Young Biochemist
    Dr. Macheboeuf was head of the investigative laboratory in the Department of Cellular Biology at the Pasteur Institute. Beljanski began his student training under the direct supervision of this highly intelligent, empathetic, and kind professor of biochemistry. In 1948, Dr. Macheboeuf suggested that his student investigate the origin of bacterial resistance against various antibiotics for his Ph.D. thesis. At the time, streptomycin, a potent killer of pathological organisms (commonly called pathogens), was the dramatic new antibiotic coming out of World War II and was just beginning to be used by medical consumers.
    As one of its most vital applications, streptomycin has been among the most effective antibiotics for putting active pulmonary tuberculosis into remission or even curing it. But the natural resistance of tubercle bacilli (the bacteria that causes tuberculosis) sometimes leaves behind thousands of organisms totally unaffected by streptomycin; consequently, the antibiotic often must be combined and administered with another antibiotic, thus allowing different mechanisms of action to attack the tuberculosis infection.
    This sort of problem occupied Beljanski’s mental efforts and laboratory skills during the four years that he worked toward his doctorate, which he acquired in 1951. The young biochemical researcher carried out Professor Macheboeuf’s recommendations and went even further. He proved that several antibiotics used were capable of inducing modifications in RNA. (RNA is one of three major components essential for all known life forms, along with DNA and proteins).
    His laboratory notes record that several species of streptomycinresistant mutant bacteria tend to accumulate certain types of RNA during a given period. Numerous published papers came out of his research not only on streptomycin but also on other antibiotics-resistant organisms.Upon gaining his doctoral degree in molecular biology, which is a sub-science of biochemistry concerned with understanding interactions between the various systems of a cell, Mirko Beljanski was drawn to the then new profession of microbiology—the