Károly Ereky

Károly Ereky (German: Karl Ereky; October 20, 1878 – June 17, 1952) was a Hungarian agricultural engineer. The term 'biotechnology' was coined by him in 1919.^[1] He is regarded by some as the "father" of biotechnology.^[2]

Early life

Ereky was born on October 18, 1878 in Esztergom, Hungary as Károly Wittmann. His father was István Wittmann and his mother Mária Dukai Takách. (Among her relatives was dukai Judit Takács (1795-1836) who was the first Hungarian female poet.) In 1893 he changed his name to Ereky. He had three brothers Jenő, Ferenc and István. Ereky finished grammar school at Sümeg and Székesfehérvár. He attended the Technical University of Budapest and in 1900 received a degree in technical engineering. Maybe there is a family connection to compatriot Franz Wittmann, prominent electrical engineer and inventor of the Wittmann-oscilloscope.

Career

He then worked as machine designer for several paper and food industry companies in Vienna, Austria until 1905. He moved to Budapest and became an assistant professor in József Technical University. In 1919 he became the Hungarian Minister of Food. He wrote over one hundred publications which were written in Hungarian and published in German. Ereky was also proficient in speaking both German and English.

In 1922 he wrote a book on the mechanisms of chlorophyll and how it can be used for animal feeding. In 1925 he wrote a book on leaf proteins as a possible food source which he also promoted as a commercial product.

Biotechnology

Ereky coined the word "biotechnology" in Hungary during 1919 in a book he published in Berlin called Biotechnologie der Fleisch-, Fett- und Milcherzeugung im landwirtschaftlichen Grossbetriebe (Biotechnology of Meat, Fat and Milk Production in an Agricultural Large-Scale Farm) where he described a technology based on converting raw materials into a more useful product.^[3] He built a slaughterhouse for a thousand pigs and also a fattening farm with space for 50,000 pigs, raising over 100,000 pigs a year. The enterprise was enormous, becoming one of the largest and most profitable meat and fat operations in the world. Ereky further developed a theme that would be reiterated through the 20th century: biotechnology could provide solutions to societal crises, such as food and energy shortages. For Ereky, the term "biotechnologie" indicated the process by which raw materials could be biologically upgraded into socially useful products.

The book sold several thousand copies within few weeks in Germany. In 1921 the book was translated into Dutch.

After WWII and death

On September 19, 1946, Ereky was sent to the prison of Vác for 12 years by People’s Tribunal for his counter-revolutionary role in Hungary. He died in prison on June 17, 1952 at the age of 74.

References