Sándor Jávorka (12 March 1883 - 28 September 1961) was a Hungarian botanist. His birthplace was Hegybánya, then in the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

, now in

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

and now called

Štiavnické Bane Štiavnické Bane () is a village in the Banská Štiavnica District, in the Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia. Name First, in 1352 it was recorded as ''Sygluspergh'', then in 1388 as ''Pergh'', in 1457 as ''Sigelsperg'', in 1559 as ''Pergh'', l ...

. He died in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

. Occasionally he has been referred to as Alexander Jávorka; the Hungarian style of his name is Jávorka Sándor.

Life and work

After attending school in Selmecbánya (now called

Banská Štiavnica Banská Štiavnica (; ; , ) is a town in central Slovakia, in the middle of an immense caldera created by the collapse of an ancient volcano. For its size, the caldera is known as the Štiavnica Mountains. Banská Štiavnica has a population of ...

), Sándor Jávorka studied at the

University of Budapest A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

and graduated in 1906 with a thesis on the genus '' Onosma''. Since 1905 he was employed in the Department of Botany of the

Hungarian National Museum The Hungarian National Museum (, ) was founded in 1802 and is the national museum for the history, art, and archaeology of Hungary, including areas not within Hungary's modern borders, such as Transylvania; it is separate to the collection of int ...

, where he worked until 1940, latterly as its director. Even after retirement, he remained there still active. In 1939 he became a professor at the University of Budapest. In 1936 he became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and seven years later a permanent member. In 1952 he was awarded the

Kossuth Prize The Kossuth Prize (, ) is a state-sponsored award in Hungary, named after the Hungarian politician and revolutionist Lajos Kossuth. The Prize was established in 1936, by the Hungarian National Assembly, to acknowledge outstanding personal and grou ...

. The focus of Jávorka's scientific work was plant

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

and the

Flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

of Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. From 1903, he published over 220 works, including 18 books. His main works include the ''Flora Hungarica'' (1924–25) and the complementary illustrated version ''Iconographia Florae Partis Austro-Orientalis Europae Centralis'' (1929 to 1934, with co-author Vera Csapody), besides several identification books and a biography of the Hungarian botanist

Pál Kitaibel Pál Kitaibel (3 February 1757 – 13 December 1817) was a Hungarian botanist and chemist. He was born at Nagymarton (today Mattersburg, Austria) and studied botany and chemistry at the University of Buda. In 1794 he became Professor and tau ...

Book translated into English

References

External links

*
BiographyP. Pejkovszka, Magyar értelmiség az újkori bolgár kultúra fejlődésében.- Begegnungen Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Bd. 2, 1996, pp. 87-97.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Javorka, Sandor Academic staff of Eötvös Loránd University 20th-century Hungarian botanists 1883 births 1961 deaths