Ödön Krompecher

* Poprad, February 16, 1870 – † Budapest, August 26, 1926 / physician, pathologist, university professor, corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1915) ; ; His father was Imre Krompecher (1839–1903), a merchant from Poprad, and his mother was Vilma Krompecher – Imre’s niece – the daughter of Sándor Krompecher (1812–1890), a doctor from Felka. Ödön started high school in Miskolc, then continued in Igló and graduated there in 1889. He obtained his medical degree at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Budapest in 1894, and then worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Pathology in Budapest. He spent nine months at the Pasteur Institute in Paris with Ilya Mechnikov. Returning from his study trip abroad, he became a private teacher in 1902, a professor in 1910, a public extraordinary teacher in 1912, and from 1914 a public full professor of pathology at the University of Budapest and the director of the 2nd Institute of Pathology. He described the squamous cell carcinoma (basalioma, Krompecher tumor) that originates from basal cells and is named after him, with which he gained international recognition. He established the occurrence of crystallization in the living world. His research on cell division, giant cells, metaplasia, various tumors, inflammation, and tuberculosis is significant. In 1918–1919, he was the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Budapest. His wife, Erika Schulek, was the daughter of the outstanding Hungarian architect Frigyes Schulek (1841–1919). Their marriage produced four children: György Korompay (Krompecher) (1905–1991), an architectural engineer, Andor Korompay (Krompecher) (1908–?), his twin brother Bertalan Korompay (Krompecher) (1908–1995), an ethnographer, folklorist, linguist, literary historian, and Judit Krompecher (1912–2005), a nurse. Some sources also consider István Krompecher (1905–1983), a medical anatomist and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, to be his son, but according to one of his students, they were only distant relatives. Ödön Krompecher also dealt with philosophy, fine arts, and ornithology (in 1921, he published a study on bird song in the Journal of Natural Sciences). He was a passionate mountaineer, he visited the Tatra Mountains and the Alps several times, and in 1898 he went on a bicycle tour in the Austrian Alps with one of his colleagues, Tibor Verebély (1875–1941), later a professor of surgery. In his last book (The History of the Krompecher Family), he traces the fate of his ancestors from 1341. He was a member of several international societies. In 1926, he received the Grand Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for his works on basal cell cancer. He diagnosed himself with an incurable disease and therefore ended his life by suicide. ; ; His main works: ; Die mehrfache indirekte Kernteilung, 1895, ; Der Basalzellenkrebs, 1903, ; Kristallisation, Fermentation, Zelle und Leben, 1907.