Gábor Bálint

The Székely were border guards in the Hungarian Kingdom and had been made into nobility in the 17the century and this was continued by the Habsburg King of Hungary, Rudolf (1572–1608) and Prince Gábor Rákóczy I of Transylvania (1630–1648).

Although of noble origins the Bálint family lived under strain and he went to local schools before taking the Lyceum examination in Nagyvárad.

Bálint was sponsored by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to travel through Russia, central Asia and Mongolia in 1871 with a scholarship of 100 golden forints which was double with support from the minister for culture József von Eötvös.

Bálint caused further troubles for Hunfalvy when he claimed in 1877 that Hungarian was an independent of the Turanian languagees and not related to a Finno-Ugric ursprache.

From 1879 to 1892 Bálint took up voluntary exile and undertook travels in the middle east and northern Africa along with his wife Rozália Spielmann.

In 1893 he returned home, thanks to his Szekely friends, to be appointed chair of the department of Ural-Altaic languages, Franz Jozef University, Kolozsvár, where he remained until his retirement in 1912.