Science in Hungary [antikvár]

Scientific research in Hungary has traditions that command respect.In the last century a number of noteworthy scientists were active,mostly at university departments. Among them were Ányos Jedlik(1800-1895) who invented the dynamo, preceding Siemens by sixyears; János Bolyai (1802-1860), one of the discoverers of absolutegeometry; Ignác Semmelweis (1818-1865), the discoverer of themeans of preventing puerperal fever; Loránd Eötvös (1848-1919)whose torsion balance was the first physical instrument to be usedin prospecting for oil, and whose very exact measurements in deter-mining the proportion of the inert and heavy mass were basicexperiments to Einstein's general relativity theory; Sándor KörösiCsorna (1784-1842) and Ignác Goldziher (1850-1921), each engagedin pioneering research in a branch of oriental culturethe formerin the language of Tibet and the latter in the culture of the Islam.They and many others contributed internationally acknowledgedresults to the development of science, but most of them were solitaryfigures who, although intellectual giants, received but little appre-ciation from contemporary society and had only few pupils tocontinue their work.It was only after the country's liberation from fascism in the late1940s that science in Hungary attained the role and appreciation itdeserves in an independent and rapidly developing country. Underthe People's Democratic Government in Hungary industrial produc-tion rose 3.8 times from 1938, the last year of peace before the SecondWorld War, to 1960, and the national income doubled between 1949and 1959. A feasible long-range plan of the national economy has seta fourfold increase in the national income of 1960 by the year 1980.The political consolidation and the rise in living standards that arereflected in these figures and the great progress and extension ofculture for everybody have made the active collaboration of scienceindispensable. A decade and a half ago research became an organic