Dr. T. Tóth szerk.: Studia historico-anthropologica (Anthropologia Hungarica 21. Budapest, 1990)

partial methodical results (paleopathology, paleoserology), hie was keenly interested in the morphological characteristics of living ethnic groups as well as in that of skeletalized populations already at the beginnings of his vocation. One of his outstanding merits is the publishing of the scientific journal Crania hungarica, the journal of the Anthropological Department, first published in 1956. He was the editor of the first six volumes of Crania hungarica (Anthropologica hungarica from 1962). He made a significant contribution to the 9th Meeting of the Hungarian Biological Association (Budapest 1970) by representing anthropology of the wide circle of Hungarian biologists. Between 1952 and 1957 he headed the Anthropological Subject-Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was the secretary of the Anthropological Section of the Hungarian Biological Association in the years 1954-1957. The starting period exerts a determining influence on every creative path of life and so did the 1930-1940s for him. He was already committed to anthropology as a student, and his wide-ranging interdisciplinary interests became clearer and clearer from 1932. On the 27th of September 1945 he qualified as a private docent with the theme "The anthropology of the peoples of the Danubian Basin in the migration period" at the Faculty of Arts of the Pázmány Péter University. As a member of Corona Archaeologica (1945-1948) he delivered lectures on the following subjects: "The anthropology of the Conquering Hungarians" (20th June, 1945), "The anthropological constitution of the Copper Age Man in Hungary" (31st January, 1947), "The Scythians on the territory of Hungary" (30th April, 1948). He initiated the presentation of the Anthropological Department of the Natural History Museum with the title "Anthropology of historic ethnic groups in the territory of Hungary" (28th May, 1948) in this creative intellectual circle. His concepts, formulated in his research student years, were delivered in these lectures. He worked as a lecturer of the Department of Anthropology at the Pázmány Péter University in the years 1946-1947 and at the Faculty of Arts of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest between the years 1952 and 1963. János Nemeskéri had strong ties with a very significant period of anthropology world-wide. In 1934 J. B. S. Haldane was speaking with acknowledgement of the craniological activity of the English school, especially of comparative statistical analysis of Morant and his colleagues in his plenary lecture (Anthropology and Human Biology) at the First International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. In 1938 E. Sjöwall was lecturing on the connections of anthropology and paleopathology at the Second International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Copenhagen. Ten years later (Brussels, 1948) R. Hartweg analyzed the links existing between anthropology and odontology at the Third International Congress of these sciences (COMAS 1956, p. 298). János Nemeskéri was among the participants of the Copenhagen Congress. However, his field of interest became known at the Brussels Congress having announced a lecture with the title "Lés éléments orientaux dans le matériel anthropologique hongrois de l'âge préhistorique et de la grand migration", though he was not able to deliver it (COMAS 1956, p. 287). There was a very important lecture by co-authors Marc R. Sauter and Helen Kaufman on some seroanthropological correlations of the Genevan female population at the Brussels Congress. (The complete text of this lecture was published in Arch. Julius Klaus Stiftung 24. 1949, p. 479-496, in Zurich.) The inspiring and innovative effects of these three congresses on the scientific activity of the anthropologists debuting in the 1930s cannot be questioned. It is sufficient to point out the methodical and measurement technical problems as well as those of palaeontology and human evolution, genetics, craniology and osteology, somatology and taxonomy, biotypology and serology, demography (life span, etc.) from the subjects of these congresses (COMAS 1956). All these had stimulating effects on the research activities of scientists. The quarter century long (1912-1938) work of G. M. Morant and his colleagues deserves our special attention in this respect. They had systematically arranged a considerable osteological material and they significantly improved the craniometrical techniques. Simultaneously with English biometricans Rudolf Martin's Zurich school succeeded in obtaining outstanding results while uncompromisingly representing the natural historic character of anthropology. János Nemeskéri was helped in the field of methodology and in his selection of suitable working hypothesis - already very complicated in that times - by his early study-tours, by his consultations with Theo Mollison, Robert Routil and Joseph Weninger as well as by his acquaintance with the important theoreticaltaxonomical publications of the 1930s (e.g. the Cro-Magnon type from the Neolithic to the present, PERRET 1938; the craniological types of East-Europe, BUNAK 1932a, b; the theoretical papers of HUG, BREITINGER and LEBZELTER 1935-1940). The development of Nemeskéri's interest for paleopathology and palaeodemography was determined by the research activities of Angel, Ackerknecht and Vallois. From 1948 he paid special attention to the ethnogenetic investigations