János Vargha (1949) is a Hungarian biologist, environmentalist, and photographer. He founded and directed the Danube Circle (Duna Kör), a civil movement which opposed the Nagymaros dam project on the Danube River in the 1980s. He completed his studies at the József Attila University of Sciences in Szeged in 1977, after which he worked at the periodical Diver. In 1981, he began to write articles and deliver lectures on environmental issues concerning water management. In 1984, he joined the Duray Committee, a movement which offered criticism of and put up opposition to the Czechoslovak leaderships’ policies against the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia. In the same year, he founded the environmentalist movement Danube Circle. Thanks to his efforts, the organization was awarded the alternative Nobel Prize in 1985. This prompted the Hungarian opposition to support environmentalist candidates in the parliamentary elections in 1985. He was dismissed from his workplace, the editorship of the periodical Science, because of his oppositional activities. In 1988, he became the government’s senior advisor on environmental policy. Until 1997, he was the leader of ISTER – East European Environmental Research Foundation. From 1998 to 2000, he was the chief environmental advisor of the Hungarian government. Now he is working as a photographer and web developer.