Toth, Jozsef

Geographer

He was born in 1940. He obtained a teaching degree in 1964 at the Biology and Geography Departments of Attila József University in Szeged, he then worked at the Economic Geography Department of the University until 1973. In 1973 he organised the Alföld Group of the Geography Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) in Békéscsaba, of which he was leader until 1984. Between 1984 and 1992 he was scientific counsellor and deputy chief director of the Regional Research Centre of MTA. He was then head of department and university professor at Janus Pannonius University, from 1994 he was dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and in 1997 he became rector of the university. Between 2000 and 2003 he was rector of Pécs University. His field of research is economic and social geography, population and settlement geography and the harder to define regional science, which requires a multidisciplinary approach. He has authored almost 400 publications of which 14 are books. He has been leading the Ph.D. programme entitled, "Regional-environmental Problems of Socio-economic Activities". From 2002 he has been leading the Earth Science Post Graduate School which has some 100 students. He is president and co-president of a number of domestic and international professional organisations. He has received several awards, in 2003 he obtained the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, Commander Cross.

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