Geonomy [antikvár]

PREFACEIn the year 2005 the Geochemical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences celebrates its 50'" anniversary. We feel appropriate to pay tribute on this occasion also to Professor E. Szádeczky-Kardoss, who founded it as a Laboratory for Geochemical Research in 1955 (located initially in the premises of the Department of Petrology and Geochemistry of L. Eötvös University in Budapest) and was its first Director, until his retirement in 1974.The present collection of papers is an abridged English-language version of the 200-page Hungarian-language book "Geonomy after the Turn of Millennium" published in 2003, on the occasion of the centenary of E. Szádeczky-Kardoss' birth. Its aim is to make the non-Hungarian readers familiar with his scientific achievements, in particular with his most ambitious (and also most controversial) concepts.These were intended to set up an all-embracing synthesis of the Earth Sciences he named Geonomy, and even more, to create a fair approximation of understanding the Universe as a whole, by means of what he called the Universal Cycle Relation.Thanks are due to the multidisciplinary team of the Subcommission on Geonomy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for their valuable contributions and to the X. Section of Earth Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for kindly financing and publishing them.Budapest, 2 May 2005György Panto Full Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences President of the X. Section of Earth Sciences of HAS