Pál Lipták


Pál Lipták was a Hungarian anthropologist and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, specialized in historical anthropology and Hungarian ethnogenesis. Based on examinations of skeletons, he improved the method of anthropotaxonomical differential diagnosis for Europids and Mongolids.

Life

Between 1932–1937 he studied and graduated at Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, gaining a teacher's degree. One year later he received a Doctorate in arts, the dissertation was called "The geography of Békéscsaba". Between 1938 and 1939 he taught at a teacher training college at Miskolc. After that, he joined the army for a two-year compulsory military service. After his military service he taught at the public Teachers’ College in Budapest till 1943. One year later he was elected teacher in „Fasori” Secondary School in Budapest.
In 1944 he joined the army and was captured by Soviet troops for four years. Thereupon he taught at the successor of „Fasori” Secondary School in Budapest for one year. From summer 1949 till 1960, he worked as a scientific official at the Department of Anthropology Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest. During this period of time, in 1956, he became Candidate of Biological Sciences by defending his thesis "The major questions of anthropology in the territory between the Danube and the Tisza rivers between the 8th and 13th centuries AD". Consequently, he was member of the editorial board of "Anthropologiai közlemények" between 1957 and 1992. Between 1958 and 1962, he was a member of the Anthropological Theme Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1960, he was also appointed to head of the Department of Anthropology at József Attila University in Szeged and worked there till 1980. He was a member of the Anthropological Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1962 to 1985. In 1969 he defended his doctoral thesis: „The anthropology of Hungarian ethnogenesis”. Afterwards he was also editor-in-chief of Acta Biologica Szegediensis from 1975 to 1980.
In 1980 he finally retired. Nine years later, in 1989, he was awarded the "Lajos Bartucz Commemorative Medal". In 1994 he was awarded the title of „professor emeritus” by József Attila University, in Szeged. Pál Lipták died on 6 July 2000, in Budapest.