The Hungarian Academy of Sciences will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2025. Among its members are many distinguished students and teachers who have left their mark not only on the Academy but also on the history of our institution. Imre Szentpétery (1878-1950) historian, university professor was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1929.
He completed his studies at the University of Budapest as a member of the Eötvös Collegium. He traveled to Germany, France, and Italy on study trips, where he mastered Western historiography methodology and became familiar with the major historiographical trends of the time. Using all this, he wanted to introduce advanced source criticism methodology in Hungary, so he focused primarily on historical auxiliary sciences, and within that, on diplomatics. From 1914, he taught at the University of Budapest, then from 1918 at the University of Debrecen. From 1923 until his death, he returned to Budapest to teach diploma studies, heraldry, and historical auxiliary sciences, and served as director of the Historical Seminar. In 1935, he wrote the history of the Faculty of Humanities, and in the 1939/40 academic year, he was dean of the faculty. He wrote several theoretical works in the field of historical auxiliary sciences, which are still used as textbooks and reference books today. He also made a lasting contribution as a source publisher, publishing, among other things, a critical catalogue of the charters of the Árpád dynasty rulers and Latin narrative texts written in Hungary during the Árpád dynasty. He was a member of the Hungarian Heraldic and Genealogical Society from 1902 and its president from 1932. The manuscripts of his university lectures are in our library's special collection, and some of his documents are in our archives.