Hungarian Academy of Sciences

• 1. A Year's Income

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  In 1825, Count István Széchenyi's pledge before the Hungarian Diet set in motion the Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Hungary's foremost learned society. He offered one full year's income from his estate toward the creation of a Learned Society. The Diet was meeting in Pressburg, which Hungarians then called Pozsony; it is now Bratislava. Pressburg served at the time as the seat of the Hungarian Parliament. Széchenyi's offer was public, and the room responded. Other delegates committed their own funds before the session closed. What they were collectively doing was more than raising money. They were declaring that the Hungarian language deserved to stand at the center of serious scholarship, science, and art. Its headquarters stand today along the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The society would spend its earliest years without an official name and without a permanent home. How it acquired both tells the larger story of what Hungary wanted this institution to become.

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• 2. Name and Stone

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  In 1845, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences received its official name, two decades after the founding pledge. The shift from a learned society to a recognized national academy marked a new phase in the institution's life.

  Architect Friedrich August Stüler designed the central building in the Renaissance Revival style. That style drew on the proportions and decorative motifs of Italian Renaissance buildings. The building was inaugurated in 1865, completing a process begun forty years earlier in a parliament chamber. Stüler's work gave the academy a fixed and prominent presence in the Hungarian capital.

  Count József Teleki served as the academy's first president from the 17th of November 1830 until the 15th of February 1855. He guided the institution through its earliest formative decades. When his term ended, the academy had earned its permanent name but still awaited the building that would give it a permanent address.

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• 3. Eleven Disciplines

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  The academy today operates through eleven scientific sections. Each section covers a distinct field or a cluster of related disciplines. The range spans Linguistics and Literary Scholarship, Philosophy and Historical Sciences, Mathematics, Agricultural Sciences, and Medical Sciences. Engineering Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Physical Sciences round out the roster, along with Economics and Law.

  The Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences degree, abbreviated D.Sc., represents one of the sections' most concrete responsibilities. It is Hungary's post-Ph.D. academic qualification, reserved for researchers who have made substantial contributions beyond doctoral work. Each section also monitors and evaluates scientific activity within its domain, advises on science policy, and assesses affiliated research institutes and university departments.

  Until 2019, the MTA administered a network of research institutes directly. That network included the Rényi Institute of Mathematics, the Wigner Research Centre for Physics, the Institute of Experimental Medicine, and the Konkoly Observatory. The presidents who oversaw the academy through its history were drawn from across Hungarian intellectual life, from aristocrats and physicists to composers and mathematicians.

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• 4. The Changing Guard

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  Count József Teleki opened the academy's first presidency on the 17th of November 1830.

  Baron Loránd Eötvös, the physicist, served as president from the 3rd of May 1889 until the 5th of October 1905. Albert Berzeviczy then held the presidency from 1905 until March 1936. That tenure of more than three decades stands as the longest in the institution's recorded history. Archduke Joseph Habsburg succeeded Berzeviczy in March 1936 and served until October 1944.

  Zoltán Kodály, the composer, took office on the 24th of July 1946, following a rapid succession of leaders in the post-war years. He served until the 29th of November 1949. Later in the twentieth century, the mathematician László Lovász led the academy from the 6th of May 2014 to the 31st of July 2020. Tamás Freund assumed the presidency on the 1st of August 2020.

  The institution Freund now leads carries with it a second body bearing Széchenyi's name. That body was established in 1992 alongside the main academy, devoted entirely to literature and the arts.

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• 5. A Literary Companion

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  The Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts, or Széchenyi Irodalmi és Művészeti Akadémia, operates as an associated yet independent institution. Its known members have included writers György Konrád, Magda Szabó, and Péter Nádas. The pianist Zoltán Kocsis and the film directors Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó have also been members.

  Leadership of the Széchenyi Academy fell to the film director Károly Makk, who assumed the presidency after László Dobszay's resignation. Dobszay's resignation came on the 20th of April 2011. Makk took over as the last recorded president. He led an academy whose known members worked across fiction, concert performance, and film. The names on public record represent only some of its membership.

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