The Széchenyi Prize-winning sociologist and academic died on April 4, and his family is taking care of his private funeral. Zsuzsa Ferge was born as Zsuzsanna Kecskeméti in an intellectual family in Budapest in 1931. She began her higher education in 1948 at the University of Economics.
One of his teachers invited him to work at the Central Statistical Office (KSH), and he obtained his diploma while working in 1953. After graduation, he was transferred to the economic department of the KSH.
He was the head of the stratification research department between 1959 and 1968, and then worked at the Sociological Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences until 1988, among other things as a senior scientific associate and head of the social policy department. His group dealt with school sociology, the inheritance of social advantages and disadvantages, and the various forms of poverty.
In 1982, he obtained a doctorate in sociology with his study on social reproduction and social policy.
He taught sociology at ELTE's Institute of Sociology, became a full-time university professor in 1988, and was then appointed head of the department of the university's Institute of Sociology and Social Policy and its Continuing Education Center. He said goodbye to the chair in 2001, after his retirement he became professor emerita.
He also worked as a guest lecturer at foreign universities, and in 1997 he was elected an honorary doctorate of the University of Edinburgh. He became a corresponding member of the European Academy in 1993, a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1998, and then a full member from 2004. In 2018, he was elected an honorary member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts.
In addition to education and scientific research, his involvement in public life was also significant, he participated in the work of several professional organizations. In addition to poverty, his main research area was the study of social structure, social inequalities and integration disorders. He has published more than three hundred studies and reported the results of his research in several books.
For his activities, he received the Széchenyi Award in 1995, the Pro Urbe Budapest Award in 1996, the Miklós Radnóti Award in 2004, the Prima Award in 2005, and the Imre Nagy Award in 2007. In 2002, he was awarded the middle cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. In 2009, he became an honorary citizen of Budapest. In 2011, he received the UNICEF Appreciation Bouquet and the European Citizen Award. In 2017, he was awarded the Mensch Prize of the Mensch International Foundation.
MTI
Cover photo: Zsuzsa Ferge (Photo: MTI/Gyula Czimbal)
