Fráter Jánosné: A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia állandó bizottságai 1854–1949 (A MTAK kiadványai 70. Budapest, 1974)

Preface

INTRODUCTION This handbook is the first to summarize the history and organization of the permanent committees of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on the basis of documents kept in the Academy's Old Archives, The handbook is meant both to furnish information to the writers of the Academy's history of 150 years and to serve as a tool for the historians. It has been endeavoured to document the place and significance of the committees within the Academy as a whole.The records of the committees in the Academy's Old Archives, in accordance with the nature of the given committee, made it possible to publish shorter or longer historical outlines or other factual material, as well as to list the manuscript sources. This work covers the period between the organization of the committees and late 1949. This periodization is justified by the historical changes and development. Prom 1950, the Academy's activities took quite a new line: its scope of interest in the scientific field has expanded and its organization has undergone significant changes to such an extent that the scientific activities it has displayed ever since then cannot be taken as a basis for comparison. + In the first quarter of a century of its existence, the activities of the Academy - founded in 1825 - could not come into full display, mainly because of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-1849, the deficiencies of the Academy's first statutes, and the