Csanyi, Vilmos

Ethologist

He was born in 1935 in Budapest and graduated from the research chemistry department of Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE) in 1958. Between 1958 and1973 he worked at the Medical Chemistry Institute of Semmelweis Medical University (SOTE). He taught and researched biochemistry and molecular biology and defended his post-graduate dissertation in 1965. He obtained his Doctorate in biology in 1970. He was appointed professor at the Faculty of Sciences of ELTE 1973, where he founded the Department of Ethology which he lead till the age of 65, additionally he contributed to the founding of the Hungarian Ethologic Society of which he was honorary president. The Department of Ethology provides main courses in ethology in both Hungarian and English. His own course is human ethology and he is the programme leader of the post-graduate ethology course. He is a member of the Neurobiology Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), the Doctoral Committee of MTA as well as the editorial board of Acta Biologica, Acta Neurobiologica and Élet és Tudomány (Life and Science). Since 1994 he has been a member of the Academia Scientiarium et Artium Europaea (Salzburg). In 1995 he became a corresponding member of MTA and in 2001 a regular member. In 2001 he became the editor-in-chief of Magyar Tudomány (Hungarian Science). He has published 22 books, 200 scientific publications, more than 200 popular scientific articles and given a number of lectures.

The Biological Roots of Human Nature