Juraj Hraško

Juraj Hraško was born on 14 May 1931 in Točnica, in the Lučenec District of what was then Czechoslovakia, into a smallholder farming family. He studied soil science and agrochemistry at the Faculty of Soil Science and Agrochemistry of the V. V. Dokuchaev Agricultural Institute in Kharkiv, graduating in 1955. He earned the CSc. degree in 1964 and the DrSc. in 1974, held a Humboldt Foundation fellowship at the Institute of Soil Science of the University of Bonn in 1966 and 1967, and was appointed professor of pedology in 1982.

After returning from Kharkiv, Hraško headed soil science work at the Central Agricultural Control and Testing Institute in Bratislava. In 1960 he set up a soil science laboratory of the Czechoslovak Academy of Agricultural Sciences that grew into the Research Institute of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, the predecessor of today's Soil Science and Conservation Research Institute. He was founding director until 1987, then directed the Soil Fertility Research Centre. He taught at Comenius University, was a visiting professor in Bonn, and later became the first head of the Department of Sustainable Development at the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra.

His research focused on soil genesis, chemistry, classification and geography. He coordinated Slovakia's comprehensive agricultural soil survey and was first author of the morphogenetic soil classification system. From 1976 to 1990 he was Czechoslovakia's government plenipotentiary for ecosystem and landscape protection in Comecon. Elected to the National Council in 1992 for the Party of the Democratic Left, he served as environment minister under Jozef Moravčík from 15 March to 13 December 1994 and was appointed ambassador to Switzerland in 1999. In 2001 President Rudolf Schuster awarded him the Order of Ľudovít Štúr, first class.

Hraško was married to Soňa Hrašková. Public biographical notes name their children as Zuzana Hrasko-Johnson and Martin Hraško. Beyond those family details, he kept private life largely out of the press and spoke mainly through his scientific and public roles.

Hraško died on 26 September 2026 at the age of 95. The Slovak Pedological Society announced the date of death; the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra confirmed the news on 28 September, and TASR and other Slovak outlets reported it the same day. No public medical cause of death was given.

Slovak soil scientists remember Hraško as the founder of the national pedological school and the organiser of the soil survey still used across the country. His classification work, institute leadership and teaching shaped generations of researchers. Public service as environment minister, Gabčíkovo committee chair and ambassador linked that scientific authority to early post-independence environmental policy. Colleagues writing after his death called him a nestor of the field whose personal standards matched his scientific stature.