Basket Domokos

* Selmecbánya, July 31, 1913 – † Budapest, November 15, 2007 / historian, university professor, president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences ; ; His mother was the well-known writer of the time, Kosáryné Lola Réz. After the change of empire in 1918, he moved to Hungary with his parents. They lived in Sopron for a short time, then settled in Budapest. He graduated from high school here, studied history and Latin at the Pázmány Péter University, and continued his studies as a student of the Eötvös College as a student of Gyula Szekfű. He made a study trip to England and France, and then, thanks to the geographer and later prime minister Pál Teleki, he also reached the USA. Upon his return home, he became deputy director of the Institute of History of the Teleki Institute and also taught at the university, but after 1945 his Marxist colleagues succeeded in getting him to leave the chair. In 1956, he was elected president of the Revolutionary Council at the Institute of History, for which he was later sentenced to two years in prison. After his release, he worked first at the Pest County Archives and then again at the Institute of History. During these years, he wrote several of his significant works. In 1982, he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which caused displeasure among many in the top party leadership, but this already foreshadowed the coming social changes. In 1985, he became a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and between 1990 and 1996, he served as president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His area of expertise is modern Hungarian and European history. He is a member of numerous Hungarian and international organizations and societies. Among his awards, the State Prize (1988), the Széchenyi Grand Prize (1995), the Order of Honour of the French Republic (1996), the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2003), the Prima Primissima Award, 2004, etc. ; ; His main works: ; History of Hungary, 1943, ; One and a Half Centuries of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (co-author), 1975, ; Napoleon and Hungary, 1977, ; Hungarian Foreign Policy Before Mohács, 1978, ; Széchenyi in Döbling, 1981, ; The Dangers of History, 1987, ; Reconstruction and Civilization 1711–1867, 1990, ; The History of the Görgey Question, 1994, ; Culture in the 18th Century 19th-century Hungary, 1996, ; Hungary and international politics in 1848–49, 1999, ; From the history of Hungarian and European politics, 2001, ; Lajos Kossuth in the Reform Era, 2002.