Senior adviser László Bassa is 65 years old


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Senior adviser László Bassa is 65 years old

This March our colleague and friend László 
Bassa, managing editor of Hungarian 
Geographical Bulletin celebrated his 65th 
birthday. On this remarkable occasion 
we’d like to thank with a few words for 
his permanent contributions to the car-
tographic activities of the Geographical 
Research Institute of Hungarian Academy 
of Sciences, for translating, editing and re-
vising a huge number of books, att ractive 
atlases and series of thematic maps demon-
strating achievements of physical, economic 
and human geography in Hungary. 

László Bassa was born on 29th 
March 1946 in Budapest. He att ended the 
Moscow State University of Geodesy, Aerial 
Photography and Cartography from 1964 
and graduated as a cartographer (engi-
neer in cartography) in 1969. Returning to 
Budapest he worked at the state-owned company (Cartographia) as a junior cartographer. 
Parallelly he translated geographical studies into Russian and also edited cartographical 
publications. In 1971 he made a state exam in English and soon became a skilled translator 
of geography and cartography in both languages.

In 1977 he changed his workplace and joined the staff  of the Geographical Research 
Institute of HAS. Owing to his excellent Russian and English and organizing talent, he 
became responsible for international relations of the institute. He held an administrative 
but important position supervised by the director of the institute. For the fi rst years of his 
activity he prepared and co-ordinated numerous international conferences in geography 
held in Budapest and other Hungarian venues. 

László Bassa was a stable member of delegations which travelled abroad to take 
part at international geographical meetings (conferences, symposia, workshops etc.) mainly 
organized in socialist countries. He prepared regular reports on the outcomes of these 
meetings, which were published on the columns of Hungarian Geographical Bulletin. 
Moreover, deriving from his open personality and positive att itude to life László Bassa 
was able to build and maintain friendly personal contacts with all kinds of geographers 
from all corners of the world, enabling to promote mutual and fruitful contacts between 
our institute and foreign academic bodies (institutes of geography, geographical depart-
ments of universities etc.).

In the early 1980s he began a postgraduate course at the Faculty of Civil Engineering 
of the Budapest University of Technology, from where he received his second university 
degree (consulting engineer of natural resources) in 1983.

From the early 1980s László Bassa became a member of the Department of 
Cartography of the Institute, engaged in methodological and empirical problems of the-
matic cartography. He developed skills in map editing, engineering geomorphology and 
environmental management. During his active 34 years in the institute he was the author 
of several book chapters, prepared dozens of reviews about books writt en by Hungarian 



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and foreign geographers and cartographers in Hungarian, English or Russian. He compiled 
a range of guidelines and supervised hundreds of map legends in foreign languages. In 
addition, he translated, revised and edited thousands of pages into English and Russian 
in diff erent geographical and cartographical topics (eg. for the books in the series Studies 
in Geography in Hungary; Recent Developments in Spatial Information, Modelling and 
Processing; Ethnic Geography of the Hungarian Minorities in the Carpathian Basin etc.)

László Bassa was among most active members of the editorial board of the 
National Atlas of Hungary (published in 1989), and in 1990 his work was rewarded with 
the Széchenyi Prize handed over by the President of the Republic of Hungary. In the 1990s 
he was the person who translated one the most essential geographical publications on 
the European Union into Hungarian (Garrett  Nagle and Kris Spencer: Geography of the 
European Union - Regional and Economic Approach published in 1999). 

Since 2009 he is retired but it does not mean that he has ceased to be active. He 
keeps on working with the editorial board of the Hungarian Geographical Bulletin as a 
managing editor, helps with his advise the younger cartographer colleagues, revise English 
and Russian manuscripts prepared for publications and checks the texts of the series of 
atlases published by our institute (South Eastern Europe in Maps, 2007; Ukraine in Maps, 
2008; Hungary in Maps, 2009)  

And I close my words with a private but essential remark: “Laci” is a really good 
friend, whose modest and open personal character makes him very popular with the staff  
of our institute and among geographers both home and abroad. 

On the occasion of László Bassa’s recent 65th birthday, we would like to express 
personal greetings from all our colleagues for all his life-long activity promoting the 
progress of cartography and geography in Hungary. We wish him many more years full 
of success, with remarkable achievements in academic and personal life, spent in good 
health and inner satisfaction.

Tibor Tiner