[Participation of Hungarians in the Elaboration of Principles of Genetics and of Biotehchnology].

It was in 1983 that Robert Bud, director of The Science Museum in London, made it public that the principles of biotechnology, and the term itself were first put into words by a Hungarian scientist, Károly Ereky (The use of life. A history of biotechnology. Cambridge - New York--Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1993). Károly Ereky stated that if raw material is used to produce consumer goods with the help of living organisms, the workflow data can be collected in biotechnology. He phrased the principles of biotechnology in his book published in German in 1919 called Biotechnology, ranking him among the world's greatest (Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin, 1919). In 1918 in Brno, three years before the birth of Mendel, count Imre Festetics formulated his theses in 4 points in his publication "Die genetische Gesetze der Natur" (Oekonomische Neuigkeiten und Verhandlungen. Brünn, 22: 169-170, 1819), using the word 'genetics' for the first time in the world. It was Vitezslav Orel, director of the Mendel Museum in Brno, who brought the attention of the world to this fact in 1989, based on the documents possessed by the Museum. The English scientist J.R. Wood published his new findings in 2001, accord- ing to which Festetics summarized his results in the form of four genetic laws well before Mendel, describing principles of the process of mutation and inheritance. Festetics provided evidence for the improvement of the stock by cross-breeding. He stated Mendel's second law on the importance of selection. He called attention to the priority of internal genetic fac- tors. Hungarians can rightly be proud of Károly Ereky (1878-1952) and count Imre Festetics (1764-1847).