Technikatörténeti szemle 16. (1986-87)

TANULMÁNYOK - Vámos Éva Katalin: Magyar nők a természettudományos társaságokban a XX. század elején

Congresses of Hungarian Doctors and Naturalists. It does not look at women researchers' role in all of the scientific sociétés of the period though it is the author's plan to do so. Working women became an accepted phenomenon of everyday life and few women began their scientific careers as well, before the first World War. It was the short period of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 when all universities were intended to be opened for women. The 1920s brought decline in the employment of women generally (in Hungary) as this was a period of before unheard-of rates of unemployment for the intelligentia and economic crisis for the whole country. The more scientific work done by women in the societies has to be appreciated. According to the evidence of the periodical of the Geographical Society women have already published travel-records at the very beginning of the 20

th century. In the first decade of the century they participated in the surveying of the Great Hungarian Plain. In the 1920s two women researchers were on the committee of the Geographical Society, Eleonóra Harmos was secretary of it from 1923 on. In the Congresses of Hungarian Doctors and Naturalists women participated usually in the section of social sciences. Dr. Vilma Hugonnai and dr. Mária Pell were the first women whose name one can find in the periodical of the Royal Hungarian Society of Natural Science. The Hungarian Section of the World Federation of University Women supported the research work of women scientists with good results. Summing up one can conclude that the mentioned scientific societies gave readily publicity to the scientific results of women researcher's work.