Dr. Kubassek János szerk.: A Kárpát-medence természeti értékei (Érd, 2004)

Dr. Gyula Gábris: Jenő Cholnoky, a professor of geography and protector of nature

the end of the 19th century, he can be considered the last Hungarian explorer-geographer. Besides fifty-three significant publications (books), Cholnoky wrote more than l60 scientific papers. In the past 130 years, the number of students studying geography was highest during his professorship. He delivered papers at several international geography congresses; among others, he was elected an honorary member of the British Royal Geographical Society. Cholnoky's intellectual heritage is perhaps the richest and most colourful in the Hungarian history of geography. One of the eminent figures of Hungarian geography, Jenő Cholnoky without doubt was the most colourful of all professional geographers. Beyond geography, his huge, encyclopaedic knowledge covered not only history and ethnography, but - to a certain extent - also natural sciences, and even engineering sciences (this was his original training). Beyond all these, he was a master of letters, the pen and the brush: he was a born artist. Cholnoky, helped by his special ability as a communicator, became a leading figure in Hungarian social life. He was elected president of about a dozen scientific or popular associations. Cholnoky's educational activity is mostly connected to the Geographic Institute of Budapest University. In the autumn of 1894, he became an assistant to Lajos Lóczy, working in the Institute in Szerb Street. On his return from China, he was appointed an assistant professor, and later he became an honorary lecturer. The Ferenc József University of Kolozsvár accepted his application for a vacant post in the Department of General Geography, so he was appointed a university lecturer in 1905 in Transylvania. However, he attempted to return to Pest in 1907, when Lóczy left, but finally Géza Czirbusz won the post. As Hungary was on the losing side at the end of the First World War, the Romanian army invaded Kolozsvár and arrested Cholnoky. He was then expelled from the country. Although he continued teaching after 1920, officially he became head of the Department of Geography at the Pázmány Péter University of Budapest in 1922 only as the successor of Lajos Lóczy. He retired from this position in 1940, when he was seventy years old. Altogether, he taught for 46 years in higher education, 30 years of which he spent at Budapest University. Through his lectures at the university, several generations became familiarised with geography, and not only those who studied geography. Towards the end of the sixties, I met an elderly panel doctor, who spoke with delight about his university years, when -