Vízügyi Közlemények, 1963 (45. évfolyam)

4. füzet - VIII. Könyvismertetés

i. ÖDÖN BOGDÁNFY 1863—1944 By W. Lászlóffy (For the Hungarian text see pp. 403) Ödön Bogdánfy, who was the editor of the Vízügyi Közlemények (Hydraulic Engineering

) from 1893 till 1916, for almost a quarter of a century, is remembered on the centenary of his birth. He was a well-known hydrologist, an outstanding notability of Hungarian hydraulic literature, an early worker of the popularization of natural sciences, and a conscious scholar of technical language. Ödön Bogdánfy graduated in 1885 at the Budapest Technical University, where later he became first a honorary lecturer and then associate professor of hydrology. As an engineer he worked as a member of the Hydraulic Service until his retirement in 1920. His scientific activity falls into the field of hydrology. He drew up, among others, the first reliable precipitation map of the country and also the hydrogeological map of the same, indicating the permeability of the surface soil. Bogdánfy also constructed a precipitation recording device based on weighting, which, contrary to the generally used instruments, can be worked also in winter. He was the first to write a pragmatic hydrography of the country, dealing in detail with the regime of its rivers. His studies into the forecasting of river regimes are valuable, of which his paper entitled „Winter Precipitation and the Spring Floods of the Tisza River" (1898), enlarging upon the problem of long-range forecast, is of pioneering importance. His most significant deed bearing on the future had been the organization of the Hungarian Hydrological Society (1917), by which he ensured the systematic cultivation of his favourite branch of science by joining the efforts of the representatives of all branches dealing with water (hydraulic engineers, geologists, meteorologists, limnologists, balneologists, etc.) within the frame of a programme elaborated by himself. The results of his technical literary activity were summarized in four hydraulic text-books and in several hundreds of studies. His work „Hydrology" (1901) is the first textbook in Hungarian dealing with the subject as a separate branch of science. Bogdánfy's „Hydraulics" (1904), his „Hydraulics of Natural Watercourses" (1906) in two volumes as well as „Water Power" (1914) also in two volumes had been perused by generations. By his purposeful activity as editor, he created a real reference library in the Vízügyi Közlemények for the Hungarian hydraulic engineers. The encyclopaedia published under the title „Hydraulics in the Annales des Ponts et Chaussées" is his unparalleled work, in which with incessant labour he gave the detailed summaries of some 1842 articles bearing on hydraulic engineering, published in the above-mentioned French journal during a century, from its inception in 1831 to 1930. The summaries were published in 10 booklets, on 2067 pages. Bogdánfy served the purpose of popularization of natural sciences by translating three books on meteorology respectively aviation by Alfonse Berget the French physicist into Hungarian by his articles published in agricultural journals, but in the main by his more than 500 reviews on the most miscellaneous subjects published in the „Természettudományi Közlöny" (Journal of Natural Sciences) in the.period 1906—1942.