Simon Papp, 1886–1970
Born into a professional family in Kapnikbánya (Cavnic), he completed his school education at grammar school in Nagybánya (Baia Mare), before going to Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) University, where he obtained a doctorate in 1909. Papp then taught successively in Kolozsvár, Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica) and Sopron, where he was appointed in September 1944 to be university professor of the newly established Faculty of Oil Prospecting and Production. He was the first in Hungary to teach petroleum geology, an international authority on natural-gas prospecting and the founder of Hungarian petroleum extraction. In 1946, he was elected a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the 1910s, he took part in prospecting the gas and oilfields in Transylvania and what became Slovakia. From 1920 to 1932, he was employed by several companies on oil-prospecting work, for instance in Yugoslavia, Turkey, New Guinea, the United States and Germany. From 1933 to 1947, he headed the gas and oil prospecting in Western Hungary. In 1938, he became head geologist and later managing director of the newly formed Hungarian-American Oil-Industry Ltd (MAORT). In 1944, he managed, through personal contacts, to prevent the Germans from taking over the MAORT operations. He also headed the natural gas prospecting in Northern Transylvania in 1941–4. Papp played a decisive part in 1945 in restoring the wells for post-war production. He warned on several occasions that increasing production at all costs would have catastrophic consequences after a time. However, when the dramatic fall in output that he had predicted occurred in 1948, the MAORT leaders were accused of sabotage. Papp was arrested on August 12, 1948 and appeared in the following year as the principal defendant in the so-called MAORT trial. He was convicted of crimes against the democratic order of the state and sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial was used as a pretext for nationalizing the American-owned company. Although Papp was deprived of his membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, he was employed by the Ministry of Heavy Industry and later the Ministry of Mining and Energy on oil and gas-prospecting work while serving his sentence in Vác Prison. The ÁVH also commissioned him to give a professional assessment of Recsk. Released in the June 4, 1956 amnesty, Papp worked until his retirement in 1962 at the Petroleum Industry Trust. In 1960, the legal and civil disabilities associated with his sentence were lifted. He died in Budapest in 1970.
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