In addition to activities as a researcher and lecturer, Eötvös played an important role in
organizational work, thus promoting the development of the natural sciences in Hungary.
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Training course for secondary scool
physics teachers, 1895
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In 1885 in the company of other university lecturers, he took part in discussions on the
latest scientific results.
This group later became known as the Mathematical Society, in its
activity physicists played an ever increasing role. As a result in 1891 the Mathematical and
Physical Society was formed, the president of which was Eötvös. The society's journal was
entitled the Mathematical and Physical Papers. The society was split in the year 1949, the
Physical Society took the name of Loránd Eötvös and the Mathematical Society was called after
a great Hungarian mathematician, János Bolyai.
In 1894, not long after Eötvös was appointed Minister of Education, the Physical
Society gave their president a festive welcome, and to honour the occasion they announced a
mathematical and physical competition for secondary school children, the winners of which
would receive an Eötvös award.
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During his career as a teacher Eötvös soon realized that a great number of talented and
hard working students were forced to stop their studies, due to lack of financial support. He
wished to help to solve this problem and so during the time he was minister, he established a
scientific residential college, which was named the József
Eötvös College, after his father. Within the framework of the college future secondary school
teachers received excellent tuition and took part in special tutorials to promote and develop
individual scientific work. The Eötvös College trained numerous excellent researchers and
teachers for Hungary in the following decades. In order to assist the poorest students no fees
were required for thirty of the one hundred places.
The financial situation of some of the college students is characterized by the
following story. In 1918 on the seventieth birthday of the now seriously ill Eötvös, the leaders
and six of the students from the college visited him on his sick bed. During the conversation
Eötvös asked how the six representatives of the students had been chosen. One of the students
gave this explanation: "Honourable sir, it was a question of jackets. It was only those with
proper jackets who came."
To promote natural sciences, Eötvös advised, Andor Semsey, a great Hungarian patron
of science, to establish a scholarship which was to be awarded to young graduates who wished
to devote themselves to scientific studies.
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Eötvös kept a close connection with several international scientific organizations. The
foremost of these was the Internationale Erdmessung, precursor to the IUGG ( International
Union of Geodesy and Geophysics) Eötvös regularly attended the general meetings of this
organization and on each occasion reported on the results of his research. As already
mentioned, the 1906 general meeting of the Internationale Erdmessung held in Budapest played
an important role in the further development of geophysical research in Hungary.
Eötvös maintained a regular correspondence with scientists and experts from other
countries. As illustrations of this there is a letter written by Einstein
to Eötvös, asking for his
advice on the selection of a candidate to fill the post of director of the Institute of Geodesy in
Potsdam.
The second letter from General Artamonoff leader of the Russian
military cartographic
service in St. Petersburg, informed Eötvös that his most important papers had been translated
into Russian so that experts taking part in the cartographic service could study them in detail.
Since 1907 work with Eötvös' torsion balance was financed by a governmental fund. In
1919, after his death, geophysical research became financially independent from the University
Institute of Physics, under the name of the
Eötvös Loránd Geophysical Institute (ELGI). This
group of researchers, which during Eötvös' lifetime consisted of a few members, has developed
into a research establishment of about a thousand members in the beginning of the 1980s. Due
to drastic changes in the social and economic system of Hungary, ELGI was reduced to about a
hundred members all striving in his name to further develop the science of geophysics.
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