Viola T. Dobosi: Paleolithic Man in the Által-ér Valley (Tata, 1999)

Prominent students of the Palaeolithic sites of the Által-ér valley István Gaál (Ősagárd, 1877. - Budapest, 1957.) Born as a son of a an Evangelical parson in a small village in Nógrád county. His interest in and appreciation for objects and phenomena of nature was apparent in his juvenile years and his course lead directly to the natural history and geography department of the Kolozsvár (today, Cluj-Napoca) University. He continued his studies in Budapest and graduated as a teacher of natural history in 19OI. In the same year he received doctor's degree in the disciplines of geology and palaeontology. He started his professional career as a highschool-teacher at Déva. On the initiatives of Antal Koch, his professor at Budapest, he got involved into the geological research of Transylvania and studied the origin of the Déva saline string, the natural gas deposits and the terrestrial Molluscan fauna. From 1911 onwards, he published several topical works on these subjects. In 1911-12, he took part in the mapping geological survey lead by Hugó Bock. As an appreciation of his scientific oeuvre, he was appointed private professor of the Kolozsvár University on the department lead by privat docent Gy. Szádeczky-Kardoss. The list of his professors and consultants is most respectable. In the formative period of earth sciences he used to work together with classical authorities of the subject. His promising scientific course was interrupted for a long while by World War I. After 19 months of military service in the front-line, he returned from the Italian battlefields by late autumn of 1918 in an injured state of health from which he did not really recovered till the end of his life. Between 1919 and 1924, he used to serve as the first professor of geology at the Szeged University. From here, he was invited to join the Palaeontology Department of the Hungarian National Museum in 1925. (In those days, the Museum of Natural History operated still in the frames of the HNM). He used to work for the Museum for the rest of his active working years, and retired to pension in 1934. As an appreciation of his scientific activity, he received the title „Candidate of Geological Science? in 1953. He continued to work even after his retirement. His incredibly broad field of interest is reflected by more than 500 publications from various fields of earth sciences, 60