József Budenz

Born June 13, 1836, in Rasdorf, near Fulda; died Apr. 15, 1892, in Budapest. Hungarian linguist. Graduated from the University of Göttingen. Beginning in 1858 he worked in Hungary; in 1872 he became a professor in the subdepartment of Altaic studies at the University of Budapest. His initial works were devoted to the Turkic languages and their genetic relationships with the Hungarian language. His major works consist of a comparative historical dictionary and an incomplete comparative historical study on the morphology of the Finno-Ugric languages. After relinquishing the hypothesis of a Hungarian-Turkic relationship, which was then popular in Hungary, Budenz set himself to rigorously proving the affinity of the Finno-Ugric languages.