Benedek Láng is a historian of science and head of the Department of Marketing and Argumentation Theory at ELTE’s Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. He aims to include non-traditional topics in his research, the scientific nature of which has been contested or rejected by various social groups throughout history (for being unscientific, dangerous or over-technical) and which consequently do not evidently merit this type of scientific treatment. He has explored the relationship between scientific, non-scientific and pseudo-scientific elements of different eras. He has also strived to pinpoint where the accepted boundaries of science lie in each era. He has examined the history of medieval astrology, the learned magic of the 15th and 16th centuries, early modern artificial languages, modern writings on pseudo-history and early modern cryptography. He has also attempted to draw conclusions about the theory of science on the basis of the topics he has studied.
Biography
Benedek Láng graduated from the History programme of Eötvös Loránd University in 1998, then studied at the Department of Medieval Studies of the Central European University, first as an MA and later as a PhD student. He defended his PhD dissertation in 2003. In the next decade and a half, he was awarded several Hungarian and international research scholarships, including the joint scholarship of the Warburg Institute in London and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study junior fellowship, and the Ferenc Deák Scholarship, the Zoltán Magyary Postdoctoral Fellowship, the János Bolyai Research Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, which provided the opportunity for him to conduct research at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, and the EURIAS Fellowship, which allowed him to spend a year at the Collegium de Lyon.
His achievements have been recognised with the Academic Youth Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Academic Achievement Award of the Central European University and the Research Award of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
Between 2003 and 2021, he worked at the Department of Philosophy and Science History at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. In 2013, he was appointed Head of Department. In 2015, he became the chairman of the Interdepartmental Scientific Committee on the History of Science and Technology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and in 2018 he defended his doctoral dissertation, also at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since 2022 he has been head of the Department of Marketing and Theory of Reasoning at ELTE’s Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences.
He has published eight books (two of which he co-authored). His book about the relationship between learnt magic and science "Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe" and "The Rohonc Code: Tracing a Historical Riddle" were published by Penn State University Press, and "Real Life Cryptology: Ciphers and Secrets in Early Modern Hungary" was published by Amsterdam University Press.