Mrs. István Tóth (Mária)

He began his career as a system programmer at KERINFORG in 1968. From 1972, he was asked by the Ministry of Internal Trade to coordinate the Food Wholesale System nationwide. Thanks to his knowledge of Russian, he participated from the beginning in the working groups of the Intergovernmental Committee on Computer Technology dealing with applications, economics and publication activities; he was an employee of the coordination office performing this task between 1976 and 1979.

In 1979, he was invited to edit the journal Információ-Elektronika, published by the Computer Education Center (Számok), and to manage the international relations between this journal and the Computer Science journal. He continued this work at its successor institution, the Computer Applications Company (Számalk). To this day, he remembers with grateful respect Pál Tóth Könyves, who headed the Literary Editorial Department of Számalk and considered his mentor, to whom he was indebted not only for the connections he gained in the profession, but also for the position he considered the most important in his career, the position of executive secretary of the National Association of Hungarian Accountants.

From 1982 to 1997, he headed the secretariat of the NJSZT; from 1986, he was the executive deputy secretary general, and from 1993, he was the executive secretary general. He established a well-organized office. From 1983, he edited and published the Society's monthly newsletter and promoted the international cooperation of the NJSZT. He played a role in the establishment of Mikromagazin, and initiated and implemented (during the times of foreign exchange shortages) the Society's travel to foreign professional events. In connection with the care of countless professional events, he considers his greatest success to be serving as the chairman of the Hungarian organizing committee of the 1995 NJSZT congress, as well as the ECAI'96 (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence) European and IFIP'98 (International Federation for Information Processing) world congresses. For the latter, he received IFIP's highest award, the Silver Core. He provided significant assistance in launching the work of the Transylvanian Hungarian Technical Scientific Society (EMT), which was recognized by the sister organization with an award.

He considers it significant and honorable that such luminaries of our profession as Győző Kovács, Bálint Dömölki, Miklós Havass, Csaba Gergely, Dezső Sima or Péter Hanák were accepted as valuable colleagues. In 1993, he was among the 25 people who celebrated their 25th anniversary and were awarded the gold badge for doing the most for the NJSZT. At the 1997 General Assembly, he was awarded the honorary title of Honorary Secretary General of the Society.

Upon request, he took on the management of MTESZ Conference Tours Ltd. from 1997, a task he performed until his retirement in 2014.

Awards: Neumann Prize (NJSZT, 1986); Silver Core (IFIP, 1998); Pro Scientia Transylvanica (EMT, 2004); Gold Badge (NJSZT, 1993).