András Róna-Tas, Széchenyi Prize-winning Hungarian linguist, orientalist, university professor, professor emeritus, and full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is a renowned researcher in the fields of Hungarian prehistory, Tibetology, Turkology, and Mongolian studies.

He obtained his university doctorate in 1958 with a dissertation on Tibetology, and in 1964 earned his Candidate of Sciences degree with a dissertation on Tibetan linguistic influence on the Monguor language.

Since 1971 he has held the degree of Doctor of the Academy. In 1990 he became a corresponding member, and in 1995 a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

He has taught as a visiting professor in Bonn and Vienna.

His research interests are extremely wide-ranging; he has produced fundamental works in Tibetology, Mongol studies, Turkology, and the Turkic aspects of Hungarian prehistory.

He is co-author of the monograph on Turkic loanwords in Hungarian prior to the Hungarian Conquest (West Old Turkic. Turkic Loanwords in Hungarian. Wiesbaden, 2011).

At the forefront of his current research is the decipherment of the monuments of an early Mongolic language, Khitan.