András Róna-Tas

Who is András Róna-Tas?

András Róna-Tas is a Hungarian historian and linguist. He was born in 1931 in Budapest. Róna-Tas studied under such preeminent professors as Gyula Ortutay, István Tálasi, Gyula Németh and Lajos Ligeti and received a degree in folklore and eastern linguistics

In 1957 and 1958 he conducted anthropological fieldwork in Mongolia, studying the culture, language, and folklore of the nomadic tribes in that country. During the mid-1960s Róna-Tas focused his fieldwork on the Chuvash people of the middle Volga River basin. In 1957, he earned his dr.univ degree, in 1964 he defended his candidates degree, and finally in 1971 he earned a doctorate from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with his thesis "The Theory of Linguistic Affinity and the Linguistic Relations between the Chuvash and Mongol Languages", published as Linguistic Affinity in 1978.

From 1968 to 2002 Róna-Tas was professor of Altaic Studies and Early Hungarian History at József Attila University in Szeged, where he is now a distinguished professor emeritus. He has published over four and a half hundred papers, monographs and reviews.