Kálmán Vánky

Kálmán Géza Vánky
Born	15 June 1930 Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania
Residence	Germany
Nationality	Hungarian
Citizenship	Swedish
Alma mater	University of Bucharest, Uppsala University
Known for	mycology of Uredinales & Ustilaginomycetes
Awards	Pázmány Dénes Award 2012
Scientific career
Fields	Mycology
Institutions	University of Tübingen
Author abbrev. (botany)	Vánky

Kálmán Géza Vánky (15 June 1930) is a Hungarian mycologist with Swedish citizenship, who lives in Germany. He is considered to be the worldwide authority on the subject of smut fungi and has dominated the taxonomic study of Ustilaginomycetes for at least the past four decades.

Vánky was born in Odorheiu Secuiesc (Székelyudvarhely), Romania, 15 June 1930. He attended the Bethlen János Reformed School and, after it closed in 1941, the United Grammar School in Odorhei until 1949. He then began his studies at the University of Cluj (Kolozsvár) in Hungarian but completed his degree in biology at the University of Bucharest in 1953.

Between 1953 and 1957 he worked as a researcher with Professor Traian Săvulescu at the Department of Phytopathology of the Agricultural Research Institute, Bucharest, Romania, where he began studying smut fungi. However – as he always wanted to be a physician – in 1957 he left Bucharest for the Faculty of Medicine, Tîrgu-Mureş (Marosvásárhely), Romania, where he obtained his MD in 1961. From 1961 until 1964 he worked as a general practitioner in Odorhei (Székelyudvarhely), then, until 1969, he worked as a balneologist in Borszék but continued studying and collecting smut fungi.

In 1969 he left Ceauşescu’s Romania and settled in Sweden, where he obtained the Swedish MD and worked as a family physician in Gagnef village. He continued to pursue and personally fund his research in the field of smut fungus taxonomy and obtained his PhD in taxonomic botany at Uppsala University in 1985. His doctoral thesis, Carpathian Ustilaginales, was published in the academic journal Symbolae Botanicae Upsalienses.

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