Árpád János Pusztai was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 8 September 1930. He was a student of the high school Óbudai Árpád Gimnázium and later obtained a diploma in chemistry in 1953 from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He worked for three years as an associate scientist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before the Hungarian revolution against Soviet control in 1956. After the failed revolution, Árpád Pusztai escaped to a refugee camp in Austria and from there made his way to England. He completed his doctorate in biochemistry at the Lister Institute in London and continued there with his post-doctorate. In 1963, he was invited to join the Protein Research Department at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland. Pusztai worked at the Rowett Institute for the next 36 years, predominately studying plant lectins. During that time, he discovered glycoproteins in plants, authored over 270 research papers, published 3 books, and was considered an "internationally renowned expert on lectins". He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1988 and has received fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust. Árpád Pusztai is married to Dr Susan Bardócz, a colleague he met at the Rowett Institute. He has two daughters from his first marriage.