The grave of Dr. Béla Alexander

He completed his medical studies in Budapest, where he was ordained a doctor of medicine in 1881. Although he mostly passed his final exams only satisfactorily, he won several competition prizes, and at the age of 5 he became József Lenhossék's assistant at the Institute of Anatomy, and then Gusztáv Scheuthauer's first colleague at the Institute of Pathology. He interrupted his promising scientific career for the sake of his father and returned to Késmárk to practice in 1882. He began to work on X-ray experiments in 1898, 3 years after Konrad Röntgen's discovery. His results were soon noticed by the German Röntgen Gesellschaft, which then recommended the young Alexander to the Budapest Faculty of Medicine. After lengthy planning, the faculty established the Central X-ray Laboratory in September 1907, and Béla Alexander from Késmárk was invited to head it. Due to the limited space available at the time for the newly established Faculty of Medicine, premises were initially rented for the new institution in the Apponyi Polyclinic building on Szövetség Street. From 1909, Alexander was the first private teacher and lecturer of radiology in Hungary, and from 1914 he was an extraordinary university professor. From September of the same year, his laboratory was finally located in the central building of the faculty, under suitable conditions. It is thanks to Alexander that medical radiology was given the right to exist as a separate discipline at the university. The relentless pace of work and the radiation damage he suffered over the years fatally undermined his health, until finally influenza took his life on January 16, 1916. It is sad and characteristic that during his struggling career, Alexander received recognition much more from abroad than in his own country ; ; Main work: ; Die Untersuchung der Nieren und Harnwege mit X-Strahlen, Leipzig, 1912. ; The number of his medical publications is around 100, mainly on radiological topics. ; ; He was a great lover of the Tatra Mountains, wrote poems about them, some of which were published in the Karpathen-Post. His poetic activity was praised by Frigyes Lám: "Dr Béla Alexander (1856-1916). Ein Zipser Mundartdichter, (Karp. Post, 57, 1936, issues 4-5)".