Father Bela

* Prešov, September 4, 1860 – † Cluj-Napoca, June 21, 1938 / botanist ; ; He came from an ancient Spiš family and his ancestors mostly lived in Levoča. His parents only lived in Prešov temporarily when he was born, and when he was one year old they moved back to Levoča, where Béla Páter completed his secondary school studies. He studied natural history and geography at the Budapest University of Technology and the Royal Joseph Technical University and obtained a secondary school teacher's certificate in 1883. He began his teaching career at the Department of Botany at the Technical University, and then became a botany teacher at the Košice Institute of Economics. In 1893, he was transferred to the Academy of Economics in Cluj-Napoca, and between 1893 and 1912, he was the head of the Cluj-Napoca State Seed Testing Station, where he supervised the cleaning and de-stemming of clover seeds. His herbal teas were awarded a gold medal at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition. In 1904, he began his herbal cultivation experiments and established the world's first herbal experiment station in Cluj-Napoca, of which he was the director until 1931. From 1907, he was a private tutor at the Ferenc József University of Cluj-Napoca, and in 1913–1914, he also headed the botany department. Until 1920, he also lectured on herbal medicine to pharmacy students. After the change of empire in 1918, the area was also part of Romania; He remained in Cluj-Napoca, although he was offered the position of director of the Budapest Horticultural Institute. The focus of his diverse work was on the research of medicinal plants, their usability and possible cultivation. He founded the first experimental medicinal plant station in Europe and was one of the first plant pathologists. He also dealt with fungal diseases of crops, organized professional courses for medicinal plant collectors, and created demonstration plots in the garden of the Medicinal Plant Experimental Station so that students and interested people could get to know medicinal plants “live”. The fame of his tea blends also reached abroad. He also took on a public role. On his initiative, regular school milk service was introduced in many schools. In the 1920s, he reorganized the Transylvanian beekeeping, which had been destroyed in the World War. ; ; His main works: ; The guiding principle of economic botany, 1884, ; Practical description of the most important grasses, 1890, ; The most important fungal diseases of cereals, potatoes and grapes, 1895, ; On fish farming, 1897, ; On seed storage and animals that cause damage to the granary, 1899, ; The most important parasites of domestic animals, 1899, Economic botany I-II., 1902–1909, ; Plant anatomy, morphology and physiology, 1907, ; Cultivation of medicinal plants, 1906, ; On the winter care of fruit trees, 1928, ; Diseases and enemies of fruit trees, and the causes of fruit tree infertility, 1929, Miraculous medicinal plants, 1932.