Zsófia Torma

Who was Zsófia Torma?

Zsófia Torma was a Hungarian archaeologist, anthropologist and paleontologist.

Torma was born in Csicsókeresztúr, Hunyad County, Hungary. She was mostly self-educated. The symbols and scripts on clay objects she found during an excavation in Hunedoara County were an archaeological sensation. She also found artifacts of the 6,000–7,000-year old Tordos culture, some of which were covered with signs resembling a system of writing.

Her most well-known work, the Ethnographische Analogien, was published in Jena in 1894.

Torma had an important role in the founding of the National Museum of Transylvanian History of Kolozsvár, to which she left her archaeological collection in her will. She was the first female to become an honorary doctor in Kolozsvári m. kir. Ferencz József Tudomány Egyetem Bölcsészeti kara, what is today Babeș-Bolyai University, on May 24, 1899. She died in Szászváros in 1899.