After graduating from science-oriented Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and the City University of New York (Brooklyn College) with a B.S. in chemistry, he was awarded his doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Alberta in Canada.

His postdoctoral research for two years involved creating new drugs for treating cancer at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in Rye, New York. Sweet then moved to the mid west where by 1971 he was hired as an assistant professor at the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis. He had been recruited to teach molecular endocrinology and create new cancer drugs, and also hormones for improving birth control.

(The latter came out of the Richard M. Nixon administration's then secret National Security Study Memorandum 200). In 1974, the National Institutes of Health chose Sweet for a coveted Research Career Development Award.

During Jimmy Carter's administration, the president promoted scientific exchange programs with Hungary. Sweet was chosen in 1977 to be among the first American medical scientists for long term research in Hungary, accompanied by his wife and four children.

That was the same year the Crown of Saint Stephen was returned to Hungary. Sweet was with his new found friend U.S. Defense Attaché Colonel Richard Friedman while the latter had overseen delivery to Budapest of the crown on Air Force One.

During these times Sweet's younger children (the first Americans to do so) attended elementary school at Városmajori Általános Iskola while his elder son Brennan studied violin at the Liszt Ferenc Zeneakadémia. Today, Brennan is associate concertmaster of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (who would love to perform in Budapest!).

His grandfather had been a graduate of the same Zeneakadémia. Sweet's daughter Cassandra was analogously influenced by her Hungarian experience in that years later as a college student she returned to Hungary during the 1989 political changes, even witnessing first hand the Berlin Wall coming down.

Then while still a journalism graduate student at the University of Missouri (the famed Mizzou J-School) she was selected by editor Mehmed Halilovic to be their English editor during six months in 1996 for the post-war daily newspaper Oslobodjenje in Sarajevo. Today, Cassandra is a senior energy reporter for the Dow-Jones (Wall Street Journal) wire services.

The Sweet children's successes were partly attributed to having been expatriots in Hungary. Sweet has continued scientific collaborations since the late 1970s into the new millennium at universities in Szeged and Debrecen.

These days he uses Budapest as a base for academic programs in the Balkans. His wife, Professor Rita Marika Csapo-Sweet similarly has worked for decades with Hungary's television and film industries - but this burgeoning summary must be limited to Frederick.

1. When did you arrive in Hungary and what brought you here?
First times: July 1977 and again September 1979 ( in 2002 bought an apartment in VIII ker) Originally, U.S.-Hungarian National Academy of Sciences long term exchange program for working on biomedical research (at MTA's Kísérleti Orvostudományi Kutató Intézet, K.O.K.I.). Lately, working on academic programs in the Balkans.

2. Have you ever been an expatriate elsewhere?
England, France

3. What surprised you most about Hungary?
Pre-1989 Hungarian complaints about socialism, post-1989 Hungarian complaints about capitalism

4. Friends are in Budapest for a weekend - what must they absolutely see and do?
Ride the kettes villamos (number 2 tram) from Jászai Mari tér to Közvágóhíd, the best sightseeing tour along the Duna.

5. What is your favourite Hungarian food?
Szegedi halászlé

6. What is never missing from your refrigerator?
Sima szóda viz (soda water, aka seltzer) and Cola Lite.

7. What is your favourite Hungarian word?
Szabadság

8. What do you miss most from home?
National Public Radio in America (but now available live on the Internet)

9. What career other than yours would you love to pursue?
I love doing what I do.

10. What's a job you would definitely never want?
Prison guard or head of any political party

11. Where did you spend your last vacation?
Dubrovnik, Croatia and Cape Cod, Massachusetts

12. Where do you hope to spend your next holiday?
Dubrovnik, Croatia and Cape Cod, Massachusetts

13. What was your favourite band, film, or hobby as a teen?
"A Summer Place" (Sandra Dee), and astronomy at the Haydn Planetarium in New York City

14. What can't you resist?
Palacsinta

15. Red wine or white?
Cola Lite

16. Book or movie?
"Judgement at Nuremburg" (starring Spencer Tracy), and R. Buckminster Fuller's, "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth".

17. Morning person or night person?
Night

18. Which social issue do you feel most strongly about?
World overpopulation (and opposing the ideologues who pretend it doesn't exist). After all, where does all that CO2 and global warming come from?

19. Buda or Pest side?
Pest

20. What would you say is your personal motto?
We are each born with only about 30,000 days. Today is a day. Make the most of it because time is a non renewable resource.