In Memoriam Prof. Dr. Péter Tétényi 1924–2009
Prof. Dr. Péter Tétényi, one of the most outstanding and remarkable scientists working with medicinal and aromatic plants in the second half of the last century, passed away on February 26, 2009. He was born in 1924 in Budapest. His qualification in horticulture was taken at Budapest University in 1947. In 1957, he began his well-known career as the director of the Hungarian Research Institute for Medicinal Plants. Under his leadership, this small Institute located in Budapest (located in Budakalász in 1973) developed quickly, becoming a modern research facility equipped with new buildings, phytotrons, greenhouses, research fields, and analytical laboratories. The new Institute and the results achieved by the scientists of the Institute became recognized throughout the world as a focus point for medicinal plant research.
In addition to developing and supervising the Institute, Prof. Tétényi contributed to the development of many fields of research in the science of medicinal plants, including chemotaxonomy. This area of research was the main subject of his thesis, for which he was granted the degree doctor of biology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1964. His book, written in English and titled Intraspecific Chemical Taxa of Medicinal Plants (and published in 1970 by Academic Publishers, Budapest), was one of the first scientific works in this subject and brought widespread international interest and reputation to him.
In Budakalász, Péter Tétényi created a new type of botanical garden based on the Dahlgren system, using modern tools for the chemotaxonomic systematization. This unique garden arrangement has maintained high botanical value over the years and became preserved in Hungary as a national nature protectorate in 2003. Over the 40 years of his professional career, Péter Tétényi published more than 200 articles and participated in development of more than 35 medicinal plant cultivars and 20 patents. To promote medicinal plant science, he established a special journal, Herba Hungarica, in 1962. Until 1991, this professional journal provided the opportunity for both Hungarian and international scientists to publish articles on a variety of topics in the medicinal plant sciences, including agriculture, botany, biotechnology, genetics, chemistry, and others. Dr. Tétényi retired in 1991 but continued his chemotaxonomic work on the theoretical level until the last days of his life.
Prof. Tétényi was an outstanding scientist and a good politician at the same time. During the socialist era in Hungary, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s, he had the difficult and dangerous task of maintaining an open a door to the West. He recognized the importance and advantages of international relations and initiated cooperation with Western scientists, step by step, carefully. As a result of his efforts and using his personal scientific merits as a first step, a new era in cooperative science became possible. In 1972, he was elected to the office of vice-president of the Medicinal Plant Section of the International Pharmaceutical Federation and 4 years later became the president of the Section. His scientific merits were appreciated by International Society of Horticultural Sciences (ISHS) and, in 1982, he became chairman of the Medicinal and Aromatic Plant Section within the Society. In the mid-1980s, he was one of the scientists who initiated the establishment of the International Council of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants to harmonize the activity of different international societies interested in medicinal plant research. As a member of the Council, he played an important role in organization of three WOCMAP Congresses held in Maastricht, Mendoza, and Chang Mai.
Through his efforts, Prof. Tétényi was able to build a fruitful cooperation with the FAO and the UNIDO for recognition of medicinal plants, and he contributed to many development projects sponsored by these organizations in both Asia and Africa. In 1984, he became the chief editor of Newsletter of Medicinal Aromatic Plants published by financial support from the FAO and the ISHS. This journal, which he edited until his retirement, became a main information source for those interested in happenings in the medicinal plants sector.
Prof. Tétényi received recognition for his wide-ranging and successful work in the form of several Hungarian and international tributes and awards. Among others, he was elected to as corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Pharmaceutical Academy in 1978 and the French National Pharmaceutical Academy in 1980. He was a great personality and an outstanding scientist who contributed greatly to the development of medicinal plant sciences. We, his former colleagues and friends, will keep his memory alive.