Lajos Kollár

Lajos Kollár was born on 6 May 1948 in Pécs, in southern Hungary. He studied medicine at the Pécs University of Medicine, where he received his general medical degree in 1974.

He went on to qualify as a specialist in surgery in 1978 and in vascular surgery in 1981, and decades later, in 2015, he added a specialist qualification in sports medicine. He defended his candidate of sciences and PhD dissertation in 1995, habilitated in 1997 and was appointed a full university professor in 1999.

Kollár began his medical career in the anaesthesiology and surgical department of the Tolna County Hospital. In 1976 he returned to his alma mater, joining the Second Department of Surgery of the Pécs University of Medicine. He headed its vascular surgery unit from 1980 to 1995 and directed the Department of Surgery from 1995 to 2009.

After a study trip to Munich in 1984 he organised the haemorheology laboratory of the First Department of Surgery in Pécs, studying the flow and deformation properties of blood. His team developed the Hevimet 40 rheometer, which, according to the University of Pécs, made up about 90 percent of the viscometers in use in Hungary. In 1989 his work won first prize in the Konrad Jobst Essay competition. From 1992 he led the introduction of endovascular surgery in Hungary and is credited with the first Hungarian use of a series of procedures, among them angioscopy, cryovaricectomy, intraoperative carotid stent implantation, intima replacement, stent graft treatment of aortic aneurysms and hybrid vascular operations.

He chaired the Hungarian Society of Haemorheology from 1994 to 1999, served on the presidium of the Pécs Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and for decades on the boards of the Hungarian Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery and the Hungarian Surgical Society. Internationally he served on the boards of the International Society for Clinical Haemorheology and the European Society for Clinical Haemorheology, and was a member of the International Society of Endovascular Surgery and the Cochrane Group for Peripheral Vascular Diseases. For more than a decade he was the regional chief vascular surgeon for Baranya, Somogy and Tolna counties.

He moved into university leadership as clinical vice dean of the Faculty of Medicine in 2006 and 2007, and from 2007 to 2012 he was director general of the University of Pécs Clinical Centre, the integrated clinical system providing top level care for the South Transdanubia region. From 2016 he was a professor at the Institute of Physiotherapy and Sport Science of the university's Faculty of Health Sciences and head of its research centre for complex sports performance diagnostics, and from 2018 he held the title of professor emeritus.

From 2020 he chaired the Health Professional College and served the government as a ministerial commissioner and chief adviser on the future of the health care system. In 2022 he was elected president of the Batthyány Circle of Professors, an association representing conservative civic values, and he was re-elected in 2025.

Outside medicine Kollár was a passionate sailor and stayed active on the water throughout his years as a sports leader. He was president of the Hungarian Sailing Federation from 2013 to 2020 and, representing it, a member of the general assembly of the Hungarian Olympic Committee for two terms from May 2013.

The federation credited his presidency with putting the organisation on a stable financial and professional footing. In those years the Kékszalag (Blue Ribbon) race around Lake Balaton grew into Europe's most important lake circumnavigation race, youth development was rebuilt, and Zsombor Berecz became the first Hungarian world champion in an Olympic sailing class at Aarhus in 2018 before winning silver at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, a historic result for Hungarian sailing. The federation also recalled his love of the mountains, saying that whether on Lake Balaton or the eight-thousand-metre peaks of the Himalaya he always put team spirit, responsibility and sportsmanship first.

His family has kept details of his private life out of the public eye.

Lajos Kollár died in the early hours of Saturday 17 October 2026, in his 79th year. The Hungarian Sailing Federation announced his death that day as an irreplaceable loss for Hungarian sailing and sport, and the Hungarian Olympic Committee and the news site Index reported it the same day. No cause of death was made public.

The University of Pécs and its Faculty of Health Sciences published an in memoriam tribute and declared him one of the university's own honoured dead. The secretary general of the sailing federation, András Holczhauser, said that working alongside him for eight years had been both an honour and a school.

Kollár is remembered as a founder of a school of vascular surgery and haemorheology in Hungary. The University of Pécs said that his name was inseparable from the modernisation of Hungarian vascular surgery and haemorheology, and that his legacy lives on in the surgical procedures he introduced, his scientific work and the generations of doctors he trained.

His honours included the Excellent Work award (1989), the science and higher education prize of Baranya County (2000), the Árpád Mátrai Memorial Medal (2002), the Pro Humanitate Baranya award (2006), the Lajos Soltész Memorial Medal (2009), the Tüke Medal (2012) and the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (2017). In sailing, his presidency is linked with the rise of Hungarian Olympic sailing to the world elite.