Mező Szilveszter szerk.: Hátizsákkal és bakancsban a Föld körül. Balázs Dénes világjáró geográfus (Debrecen, 2007)

Around the Globe in trekking boots and with backpack

A clear indication of the respect from his contemporaries would be the high number of professional and state awards and prizes granted in appreciation of Balázs' outstanding research, authorial, and museological activities. Included amongst these official forms of recognition were the medals and memorial plaques called Lóczy Lajos-érem, Körösi Csorna Sándoremlékérem, Vass Imre-érem, Herman Ottó-érem, Kadic Ottokárérem, but he was also the recipient of the awards named after Szent-Györgyi Albert and Móra Ferenc, together with the Officers' Cross of the Hungarian Republic. Through the present exhibition, we would wish to present as complete an image as possible of the achievements of dr. Dénes Balázs. We hope that you will recognize him in so many of his capacities illustrated in the display cases, ranging from those of the speleologist and karst researcher of world-wide fame, through the ones of the lonesome globe-trotter with a backpack, to those of the successful natural scientific collector and popular author of books on geographical subjects, not to mention the ones of the scholar of geography and founder of a museum with outstanding results in the organizational work of the Hungarian discipline of geography and, last but not least, those of the individual human being. It is the intention of Déri Múzeum to pay proper homage to the memory of the Debrecen-born scholar-geographer through this seasonal exhibition, accompanied by a variety of related museumpedagogical events and other attendant functions. Translated by Pál Csontos