ACTA ALIMENTARIA VOL. 11 (A QUARTERLY OF THE COMMITTEE ON FOOD SCIENCE OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 1982)
1982 / 1. sz.
IN MEMÓRIÁM К. VAS The Editorial Board of Acta Alimentaria deeply regrets to announce that its founder and Editor-in-chief, Director of the Central Food Research Institute, President of theCommittee on Food Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences passed away on 22 November 1981 at the age of 62. Professor VAS was an internationally recognized leading personality of Hungarian food science. His scientific heritage is of such a variety that it is impossible, within the frame of this obituary, to give a full account of it. Professor VAS was born at Mosonmagyaróváron 20 August 1919. He graduated in 1941 as a chemical engineer at the Technical University in Budapest [1]. The research work he carried out as an assistant of the Food Chemistry Department of the Technical University (1941-1944) aroused interest [2, 3]. He received the degree of Doctor of Technical Sciences [4] in 1944. He continued his promising research activity, interrupted for some time by the Second World War, at the Research Institute for Agricultural Industry. While working at this Institute he was provided the possibility of several study tours abroad. In 1947-1948 he visited the University of Chicago, the University of California (USA) [5], Cambridge University and the Low Temperature Research Station, Cambridge (U. K.). The work carried out in the latter and his contact with Professor Maurice Ingram, developed during his residence there, had a decisive effect on his later career [6]. From the earliest days his principal interest was in food microbiology [13] and food preservation [2], [23]. His contributions to these fields became later the basis of scientific schools [23]. His further fields of activity included food chemistry, analytics, bio-engineering and applied enzymology [29, 36]. Acta Alimentaria 11, 1982