Sociologist Szósa Virgé, a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, has died at the age of 93, her family told MTI on Friday. The award-winning sociologist and academic Széchenyi died on April 4, and his family is looking after his private funeral.
Zsuzsa Ferge was born Zsuzsanna Kecskeméti into an educated family in Budapest on April 25, 1931. She began her higher education in 1948 at the University of Economics. One of his professors invited him to work at the Central Statistical Office, and he obtained his degree while working in 1953. After graduation he was transferred to the Economic Department of KSH.
He was Head of the Class Research Section between 1959 and 1968, and then worked at the Institute for Social Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences until 1988, inter alia as Senior Scientific Assistant and Head of the Social Policy Section. His collection dealt with school sociology, the inheritance of social advantages and disadvantages, and various forms of poverty. With his study “Social Reproduction and Social Policy,” he obtained a doctorate in sociology in 1982.
He taught sociology at the ELTE's Institute of Sociology, became a full professor in 1988, and was subsequently appointed Head of the Department of the University's Institute of Sociology and Social Policy and its Center for Continuing Education. He bid farewell to the chair in 2001, and after his retirement he became an honorary professor. He has also served as a guest lecturer at foreign universities, and in 1997 he was elected an honorary doctorate from 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 a full member in 2004. In 2018, he was elected an honorary member of the Széchényi Academy of Letters and Arts.
In addition to teaching and scientific research, his involvement in public life was also important, as he was involved in the work of many professional organizations. In addition to poverty, his main research area was the study of social structure, social inequality and disorders of integration. He has published more than three hundred research papers, and presented the results of his research in several books. He has been honored with numerous awards for his activities: in 1995, he received the Széchenyi Prize, and in 2011, he received the UNICEF Appreciation Package and the European Citizen Award.
