Boundless history:1859: The Hungarian Ladies’ Prize is established to “promote the Academy’s work”

On 28 February 1859, Pál Almási Balogh, a homeopathic physician, linguist, and Academy member, informed the General Assembly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences of the establishment of a new foundation. Twenty-six Hungarian women sought to support the Academy’s main objectives – the advancement of the sciences and the development of the Hungarian language – for a decade, each pledging an annual donation of 3 forints.

The number of women contributing soon rose to the symbolic number of 48. The women were predominantly Protestant and came mainly from aristocratic, and to a lesser extent noble, families. The donors were often connected through family and marital ties, as well as through their links with the Academy. For example, Countess Franciska Szapáry, wife of Count László Wenckheim, was the sister-in-law of Count Emil Dessewffy, the Academy’s president. Most of the donors had several family members who had actively participated in the events of the 1848–1849 Revolution and War of Independence. Among them was Antónia Zichy, widow of Count Lajos Batthyány, the first Prime Minister of Hungary’s first responsible government, who returned to public life by supporting the popularisation of science. The women involved continued to uphold the ideals of the revolution and stand up for an independent Hungarian state. In this spirit, they sought to fulfil their patriotic duties and to support the Academy in its struggle to preserve the Hungarian language and culture.

According to the original intention of the women donors, the newly established prize was to be awarded each year to those Academy members who delivered the most outstanding lectures at the Academy’s meetings in terms of content, language and style. The Academy politely rejected this concept and called on the women to reconsider the foundation’s objectives. They were assisted in this by Balogh, and in consultation with him, they established the prize on a new basis using the funds they had raised. The award became an annual open competition designed to address deficiencies in the availability of scientific books, with a particular focus on the natural sciences. The Academy and the women jointly compiled a list of forty topics, of which they planned to announce four each year.

Balogh thus successfully incorporated support for the publication of scientific works into the concept, an issue that had long been close to his heart. The publication of specialist works and the dissemination of scientific knowledge were among the Academy’s most important objectives, as already set out in the institution’s founding documents of 1831. During the Reform Era, there was debate over whether efforts should focus on bringing Hungarian specialist publishing up to date or, following the example of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, founded in England on the initiative of Lord Henry Brougham in 1826, on supplying a wider reading public with popular science publications. In 1836, an Academy committee examining issues of the organisation of science ultimately proposed a third solution: the commissioning of inexpensive scientific handbooks. The concept failed to come to fruition, however, due to the society’s financial difficulties and organisational problems. The idea of a society dedicated to the popularisation of knowledge was eventually realised through the Hungarian Ladies’ Prize, for which the ladies’ foundation provided the necessary financial support. Balogh successfully linked the growing demand for the popularisation of science with patriotic female patronage, which he believed was the only way for women to actively participate in scientific life.

The Hungarian Ladies’ Prize (1859–1874) could not, on its own, solve the problems facing specialist scientific publishing. The announced topics were regularly reissued due to frequent failures to attract submissions. During the prize’s existence, only 27 of the 40 proposed topics were actually announced, and just 11 competition entries were published: six in the book series Tudományok Csarnoka (Hall of Sciences), created specifically for this purpose, while another five were published by the Academy. The results of the Ladies’ Prize drew long-term attention to topics in the natural sciences and to the need for the Academy to develop a framework for the popularisation of science.