Dudits, Denes

Plant geneticist

He was born in 1943 in Mosonmagyaróvár. He became an agricultural engineer in Gödöllő in 1966 and in 1972 obtained a postgraduate degree in biology whilst working at the Genetic Institution of the Szeged Biology Centre (SZBK) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA). In 1974-75 he studied the method of somatic hybridization by the fusion of plant protoplasts at the Prairie Regional Laboratory in Saskatoon (National Research Council of Canada). In 1982 he completed a doctorate in biology. In 1982-1983 he was a visiting professor in Boston at the Molecular Biology Department of Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Faculty of Medicine of Harvard University where he studied the application of recombinant DNA methods and the isolation of genes. In 1989-1999 he was director of the Plant Biology Institution of SZBK and has been director general of SZBK for 8 years now. He is the president of the Biology Committee of the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. He is a member and leader of various domestic and international scientific organisations. He has received important awards during his career, including the Széchenyi award. Currently, he is president of the Szeged-Bipolisz Élettudományi Konzorcium (Szeged-Bipolisz Life Sciences Consortium), which is working on the development of a high-tech bio-industry based on research in genomics and bio-informatics.

The Molecular Mysteries of the Sexual Life of Plants