The Hungarian Academy of Sciences will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2025. Among its members are many distinguished students and teachers who have left their mark not only on the Academy but also on the history of our institution. Sándor Szilágyi (1827–1899) historian, library director, editor was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1873.
Sándor Szilágyi studied in Kolozsvár, then moved to Pest during the 1848 Revolution, where he worked as a journalist. He worked for several periodicals and even experimented with publishing his own newspaper. From 1852, he taught mathematics at the Reformed College in Kecskemét, where he was a colleague of the poet János Arany, among others. From 1867 he was employed as secretary in the Ministry of Religion and Education, and in 1878 he was appointed director of the University Library. As a historian, he was mainly concerned with the history of Transylvania in the 16th and 17th centuries, edited the journal Századok and started the Historical Archive (Történeti Tár) and Hungarian Historical Biographies (Magyar Történelmi Életrajzok) series. He was also involved in the editing of the Transylvanian Parliamentary Memoirs and the ten-volume History of the Hungarian Nation, published on the occasion of the Millennium. During his two decades as director of our library, he has taken great care to organise the manuscript collection and publish its catalogues, and to develop new types of card catalogues and storage arrangements. His legacy can be found in our library’s manuscript collection.