B. Papp szerk.: Studia Botanica Hungarica 38. 2007 (Budapest, 2007)

Barina, Zoltán: Pál Kitaibel was born 250 years ago. (3 February 1757, Nagymarton - 13 December 1817, Pest)

Studio, bot. hung. 38, pp. 5-10, 2007 PÁL KITAIBEL WAS BORN 250 YEARS AGO (3 February 1757, Nagymarton - 13 December 1817, Pest) Z. BARINA Department of Botany, Hungarian Natural History Museum H-1476Budapest, Pf. 222, Hungary; barina@bot.nhmus.hu Pál Kitaibel, the "Hungarian Linnaeus", is the founder of modern botanical research of the 18th19th century in the Carpathian Basin. As seen in the lives of many great early scientists - who are regarded as polymaths he had a truly wide interest in natural history. Kitaibel not only achieved significant results in botany, but also in the field of zoology (HORVÁTH 1918<2), mineralogy (TOKODY 1957), chemistry (INCZE 1927), geophysics (RÉTHLY 1958), and ethnography (HORVÁTH 1918&). Kitaibel was born in Nagymarton, part of Sopron county in the western part of historical Hungary (currently Mattersburg, Austria) as a son of a well-off peasant family. He completed his secondary schools studies in Sopron and Győr, and then attended the university in Buda, for a short period of time on the faculty of law, and later on the medical faculty. His talent and scientific determination was so obvious that he was appointed senior lecturer already as a fourth-year student, by the side of Jacob Joseph Winterl, professor of botany and chemistry. From this time he began developing the living material of the botanical garden of the university through collecting live plants and seeds. In 1790 he arranged the herbarium collection of Ferenc Mygind, counting 5,461 species, and completed it with his own specimens. This way he established the foundation of the herbarium of the university. From 1784 he directed the botanical garden, which initially comprised of 800-1,000 plant species, however, by the time of his retirement (1816) this increased to a robust number of 6,755. There is a long list of references presenting the achievements and appreciating the life-history of Kitaibel. Related to his life and activities, the works of SCHUSTER (1829; its Hungarian translation: SCHUSTER 2000), GOMBOCZ ( 1936) and JÁVORRA ( 1957) are fundamental, which provide all important information on his whole walk of life, his work in natural sciences, as well as on the relationships with his contemporaries and on his private life.