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. Tivadar Pauler (1816-1886) lawyer, university professor, minister was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1858.
Tivadar Pauler completed his university studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Pest in 1836. He began his teaching career at the Law Academies of Zagreb and Győr, and from August 1848 he taught at the University of Pest, where he was appointed full professor of the law of reason and criminal law in 1852. He served two terms as Dean of the Faculty of Law, and in 1861/62 he was Rector of the University. After the death of József Eötvös, he was Minister of Religion and Public Education from 10 Februrary 1871 to 4 September 1872. During his tenure, he approved, among other things, the foundation of the Teacher Training Institute, the predecessor of the present-day ELTE Trefort Ágoston Practical High School. He began his academic career in 1841, publishing nearly a hundred papers on public law, legal philosophy, constitutional history and criminal law. In 1880, on the centenary of the university’s move to Buda, he started to write the history of the university, but in the end he could only complete the first volume. He died in 1886, and his rich collection of documents is now in the manuscript archives of the ELTE University Library and Archives.