Technikatörténeti szemle 23. (1997-98)

TANULMÁNYOK - Vámos Éva Katalin: Women’s Opportunities of Studying and Practising Engineering in Hungary from 1895 to 1968 (On the example of Budapest Technical University and its women students)

tion in Hungary saw a great boom, especially the then only technical university of the country. Thus, Éva Bányai obtained a job as university assistant at the Department of General Chemistry of Budapest Technical University. Here she found the sphere of scientific activity she had always dreamt of and soon acquired a high reputation among the analytical chemists of the country. Then she had to face other difficulties: the so-called "cadre policy" of the communist government started considering her a "class-alien", owing to her father's earlier position as factory manager. Notwithstanding, she succeeded in obtaining her CSc. degree in 1955. As an achievement of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, a period of consolidation began, favourable also for science. Thus, the Isotope Laboratory of the Department came into being in 1958 and Éva Bányai was put in charge of it. Her activities as scientist are evidenced by 47papers published between 1955 and 1979, and a number of books she has been sole author, coauthor or editor of . Her book "Chemical Indicators", first published in 1961, has been translated and published in England and in Czechoslovakia, too. She was also on the board of several scientific committees, among others she was member of the Committee for Analytical Chemistry of the Hungarian Academy of Science and was on the Editorial Boards of Magyar Kémikusok Lapja (Journal of Hungarian Chemists) and of the international journal "Radionalytical Letters", respectively. As university docent she gave many courses, first both in general and in analytical chemistry, later only in the latter discipline. She was known and respected as highly talented, high-level and conscientious teacher. She retired from teaching in 1980 but kept working at the Department as scientist. After retirement, however, her inclination to pessimism and depression grew stronger and, finally, for fear that much of the grief and cruelty she had experienced and endured might happen again, she, herself, put and end to her life.

42 In order to promote scientific research at university departments, the Hungarian Academy of Science sometimes completed the teaching & scientific staff by paying for some additional researchers' posts the university budget was not able to afford. Such additional staff was mainly granted to departments headed by a member or a corresponding member of the Academy of Science, or a holder of the degree "Doctor of Sciences". (The two scientific co-workers enlisted in Table 3 were employed at the Department of Mechanical Technology of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Wireless Telecommunication, which were headed by an ordinary and a corresponding member of the Academy, respectively. Out of the 8 scientific coworkers paid by the Academy, 4 were employed at the Department of General and Analytical Chemistry, 2 at the Department of Organic Chemical Technology, both headed by ordinary members of the Academy, while 2 belonged to the "Department of Organic Chemistry, headed by a Doctor of Sciences.)