Alexandru Papiu Ilarian

Alexandru Papiu-Ilarian was a Romanian revolutionary, lawyer and historian.
Papiu Ilarian was born in Bezded, Kingdom of Hungary on 27 September 1827. His father was the Greek-Catholic priest Ioan Bucur Pop, also a Romanian revolutionary, who was executed at Turda by hanging, at 54 years old, by the Hungarian authorities in March 1849. In 1832 he moved with his family to Budiu de Câmpie, near Târgu Mureș, the native village of his father, where he attended primary school. In the autumn of 1838 he entered the Catholic secondary school in Târgu Mureș. He finished high school in Cluj and obtained a doctorate of laws at the University of Padua. He was active in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.
He was a founder and president of the Transylvania Society, between 1867 and 1874. He was elected to the Romanian Academy in 1868. As member of the Bar in Bucharest, he pleaded in court the case of the oxcart drivers from Giurgiu, in 1873. He died in Sibiu on 23 October 1877, and is buried at the Church between the Fir trees.
Budiul de Câmpie commune was renamed Papiu Ilarian in 1925. The Alexandru Papiu Ilarian National College in Târgu Mureș as well as high schools in Dej and Zalău are named after him.