Committee on Statistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The Committee on Statistics, celebrating in 2010 the 150th anniversary of its formation, was established on the motion of Antal Csengery in 1860 in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The regular review and evaluation of statistical data was required by the central administration before the 19th century too. The idea of establishing an independent statistical organisation first came up in the Parliament of Pozsony in 1844. Its foundations were laid at the time of the War of Independence, in 1848, when within the frame of the Ministry of Interior the official Hungarian statistical service was established, led by Elek Fényes, but was functioning only for a short time as a National Statistical Office. After the fall of the War of Independence, data were collected again according to the laws of the statistics of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
With the establishment of the Committee on Statistics the idea of Csengery was realized, according to which "the creation of domestic statistics [...] cannot be expected from foreign hands".
From the letter (Hungarian) of László Korizmics and Antal Csengery one can know the task of the committee:
"to collect, order, review and - also compared to the data of other states - process all kinds of statistical data [...]."
From 1874 the operation of the committee covered not only the field of statistics but also that of the national economy, and this was reflected by its name as well. It went on operating first as a Committee on Economics and Statistics, then as a Committee on National Economy and Statistics, and later on as a Committee on National Economy.
The committee, abolished in 1945, was re-established following a long pause on 22 February 1967 as part of the Section of Economics and Law (IX) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Committee on Statistics has been operating in this organisational framework ever since.

Further points of interest:

Letter of János Hunfalvy to the "Honourable" Academy (Hungarian)
Presidents of the Committee on Statistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Hungarian)
Members of the Committee on Statistics in 2010