ZOLTÁN KODÁLY - Composer
December 16, 1882, Kecskemét – March 6, 1967, Budapest
Composer, father of the “Kodaly method”
Kodály began collecting folk music in 1905. In 1907, he became a professor at the Academy of Music, teaching music theory and composition. He published his first composition in 1910. In 1919, he worked in the musical directorate of the short-lived communist government, for which he was banned from teaching.
Isolated, he composed Psalmus Hungaricus, which was acclaimed internationally, followed by Háry János in 1926, popular all over the world. Székely Spinning Room was premiered in 1932. Other Kodály works include Dances of Marosszék (1927–1930), Summer Evening (1927), Dances of Galánta (1933), Te Deum of Budavár - composed to mark the 250th anniversary of the liberation of Buda (1936) and Peacock Variations (1939).
Kodály’s studies in music theory were also particularly significant. A monograph called Hungarian Folk Music was published in 1937.
During World War II Kodály was active in rescuing persecuted people and eventually had to go into hiding himself. He composed Missa Brevis in 1945. He was active in the democratic transformation and became chairman of the board at the Academy of Music. From 1946 to 1949 Kodály was President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His work, Czinka Panna was premiered in 1948, and the Kállai Duo was first presented in 1951.
A series of books, Modern Music and the Folk Music of Hungary was published between 1951 and 1967, introducing his concepts on music education. In 1948 and 1952, Kodály was awarded the Kossuth Prize for his oeuvre, which included ethnography, music history, music aesthetics, music criticism, history of literature, linguistics and language culture.
Music education was central to his work throughout his lifetime, and included methods of teaching singing, reading and writing music in early education, and promoting choirs based on local tradition. The Kodály Method of Music Education is now recognized and used throughout the world.
Zoltan Kodaly, composer, Kodaly method, music education, ethnography, music history, folk music
JOHN VON NEUMANN - Father of the Computer
December 28, 1903, Budapest – February 8, 1957, Washington
Mathematician, “Father” of the computer
The achievements of John von Neumann (János Neumann) have endured in several scientific areas. He set the foundations for the theory of critical mass, and was the inventor of game theory.
Neumann received a PhD in mathematics in Budapest at the age of 26, and a year later was teaching at Princeton University in the United States. His first decades of work were theoretical, but after 1940, he began studying applications. Neumann played a major role in research to release atomic energy. He was a member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1954 until his death. He published about 150 articles on his research.
In the final years of his life, Neumann was concerned with biological self-reproduction. His name is best known for his work in computer science. His proposal led to redesigning the oscilloscope, originally used for maintenance and construction, turning it into a computer display, making computer operations visible for the first time in the history of technology.
Neumann discovered that computers could not only store data, but also could save operational instructions, in other words programs. He described the theory in 1945 and the first computer based on the Neumann principle was constructed in 1952. Modern computers are designed on that foundation.
John von Neumann, Janos Neumann, computer science, Neumann principle, mathematician, critical mass, game theory, computer display, computer programs
LÁSZLÓ PAPP - Boxer
March 25, 1926, Budapest – October 16, 2003, Budapest
Three-time Olympic champion boxer
In an active sports career from 1945 to 1964, Papp won Olympic championships in 1948, 1952 and 1956, first as a middleweight, and then as a light heavyweight. He also won two European championships.
In 1957, he became a professional, winning 29 fights, and taking the European title in 1962, 1963 and 1964.
The communist leadership of the country did not allow Papp to compete for the professional world championship, so he retired and became a coach. He was appointed head coach in 1970. He served as adviser for the Ferencváros Club from 1964 to 1968, for Budapest Honvéd in 1969, and became chief coach for the national team in 1969. Papp held this position until 1992, also working as a club coach.
In 1982 Papp was presented with the International Olympic Committee Order of Merit, and in 1989 he received the World Boxing Commission’s belt for “the world’s best amateur and professional middleweight boxer.” He has been a member of the Hungarian Immortals’ Club since 1991. He received an International Fair Play award in 1993.
In 2001 Papp was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. In 2001, he was voted the third best Hungarian male athlete of the 20th century in a contest run by the newspaper Nemzeti Sport under the patronage of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.
Laszlo Papp, Olympic champion boxer
FERENC PUSKÁS - Soccer player
April 2, 1927, Budapest – November 16, 2006, Budapest
Soccer player, captain of the “Golden Team”
As a striker, Puskás was a dominant personality in Hungary’s legendary Golden Team. In 1952, he was a member of the team that took gold in the Helsinki Olympics, in November 1953 he scored two goals in Wembley Stadium London, when Hungary beat England on its home ground by 6:3 in a game remembered in both countries to this day, and in 1954 he and his team took the silver medal at the world championships in Switzerland. He played 85 games with the national team and scored 84 goals.
In October 1956, Puskás was traveling abroad for a Champion Teams’ European Cup match with his club, Budapest Honvéd, when revolution broke out in Hungary. When the revolution was crushed, he resettled in Spain and did not return home.
Playing for Real Madrid from 1958 to 1967, Puskás started in 372 games and scored 324 goals, also helping to win the Champion Teams’ European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup. He played on the Spanish national side four times and also played for the all-European selected eleven. Puskás began working as a coach in 1969. His best coaching results were with Panathiniakos of Greece in 1970–1971, which came in second in the Champion Teams’ European Cup under his leadership.
In 1993, Puskás was head coach of the Hungarian national team for four months. In 1997, he was awarded the Olympic Order of Merit of the International Olympic Committee. In early 1997 he received an award at the Soccer Player of the Century Gala, based on data of the German organization that focuses on soccer history and statistics, because as a player for Kispest, Budapest Honvéd and Real Madrid, Puskás scored more goals than anyone else in the world in division one soccer games: 489. In 1999, he was appointed honorary consul of Hungarian sports.
In 2001, Puskás was voted best Hungarian male athlete of the 20th century in a contest run by the newspaper Nemzeti Sport under the patronage of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.
Ferenc Puskas, Soccer player, captain of the Golden Team, 6:3 Wembley Stadium London, division one soccer
TIVADAR PUSKÁS - invented the predecessor of radio
September 17th, 1844, Pest – March 16th, 1893, Budapest
Tivadar Puskás invented the telephone exchange and the telephone newsreader, the predecessor of the wired radio.
In the legend, Tivadar Puskás said “hallo” into the telephone receiver for the first time on April 2, 1878, or rather he said “hallom” (that is to say “I hear” in Hungarian), so the world “HALLO” originated from this Hungarian word. It was the first long-distance call, which was established between Puskás and Edison having overcame the distance of 107 miles between New York and Philadelphia.
Puskás also built Europe’s first telephone exchange in 1879. In Budapest, the world’s fourth exchange commenced operating in 1881.
Puskás received his higher education in Theresianum, then at the Technical University in Vienna. However, he was not able to complete his studies due to his father’s death. Later he undertook work in London and in Transylvania, and then he traveled to the United States and made some business. In 1876 Puskás returned to Europe for a short time, and began to build the telegraph network in London and Brussels. His concept was to create a telegraph apparatus that on its switchboard the lines of the factories and offices in the city could be connected to it and to each other, as well. However, the idea was considered too expensive.
Having heard that A.G. Bell presented his new invention, the telephone, Puskás traveled there at once, and realized that he should build a telephone exchange.
He visited and convinced Edison that the telephone is a novel device which needed to be made available to the public. From the autumn of 1876 to the summer of 1877 Puskás worked with Edison on the idea of the telephone exchange at the Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park.
In the summer of 1877, Puskás as Edison’s European agent moved to London and in 1878 to Paris, where he directed the installation of the first telephone network and exchange. In October 1879 Tivadar Puskás became a member of the board of directors in the Edison Company.
Meanwhile, Puskás trained his brother, Ferenc, who with Edison’s consent, obtained exclusive rights to build telephone exchanges on the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The two brothers returned home and began to install a telephone exchange in Budapest, which started to operate with twenty five subscribers on May 1st, 1881 as the sixth telephone exchange in Europe. Three months after opening the first exchange Puskás set up the second one, then, by setting up another one in Buda the number of telephone exchanges in Budapest increased up to three.
In 1881 at the World Fair in Paris Puskás presented Jumbo, a giant 27-ton dynamo of Edison’s company, the phonograph and electric lighting. Jumbo supplied electricity to 1,000-1,200 light bulbs with tremendous success.
Puskás was also interested in the telephone newsreader, i.e. the idea of transmission to several stations at the same time.
When on the exhibition Puskás has shown the General Telephone Company of Paris he organized the first “live broadcast”. He broadcast a performance from the Paris Opera to a room at the exhibition where 16 listeners were able to hear the performance on earphones.
On February 14th, 1882, at the spring festival organized in the building of the Vigadó (Municipal Concert Hall) of Pest Puskás broadcasted Erkel’s opera “László Hunyadi” from the National Theatre through his “songtelephone”. At this time only a limited number of listeners could enjoy the broadcast. In order to make it possible to listen to it on innumerable receivers at the same time, the sound had to be amplified. Puskás’s sound multiplicator, a forerunner of today’s amplifying valve served for this purpose.
After several unsuccessful businesses Tivadar Puskás, poor and ill, returned to Budapest, where, the Budapest Telephone Company, Puskás Tivadar and Co. almost went bankrupt. Fortunately the Minister of Industry and Trade who comprehended the potentialities of the telephone, took the telephone network into public ownership, and rented it to Puskás. Further enhancement, therefore, was supported by the state.
After Puskás founded the telephone exchange of the city of Budapest, he invented the forerunner of the radio, the telephone broadcaster. On February 15th, 1893, for the first time in the world, the telephone newsreader began to broadcast in Budapest, Hungary. In the first period the telephone newsreader did not have independent wires, the subscribers requested connection from the telephone exchange and they could listen to permanent broadcasting from 9 in the morning till 9 in the evening on the telephone. Later individual wires were laid down for the telephone newsreader.
This is how W. B. Forster Bovill writes about it in Hungary and the Hungarians, (1908, pages 111-112):
“You may be seated as I was in the reading-room of one of the hotels, or in a large coffee-house, when suddenly a rush is made for a telephone-looking instrument which hangs from the wall. In time perhaps you will become one of these “rushers.” It is the Telephon Hirmondo, a kind of newspaper which telephones its news instead of printing it. Budapest is the only city in the world which possesses such an instrument. All day long a clear-toned elocutionist announces news just as it arrives, it commences in the morning at nine by sending the correct time, which is repeated every hour. At twelve o’clock the news of the day, home and abroad, is sent out to thousands of homes, etc. Sometimes a raconteur will make the luncheon hour pass easily by telling a few good stories. The latest rise and fall “on ‘Change,” programme of events, meetings, Parliament, horseraces, these are a few of the items one may receive. From 4.30 to 6.30 one may listen to a famous Honvéd military band, and after seven in the evening, for five nights of the week, the subscriber sitting at home may listen to grand opera. On the two remaining evenings the strains of a gipsy band coming from a distant café adds to the enjoyment. The Magyar loves pleasure.”
Today’s wired radios are based on the structural elements of Tivadar Puskás’s telephone newsreader.
A month later the telephone newsreader broadcast (telephonograph) released the sad news that Tivadar Puskás died of heart attack, at the age of 49.
Tivadar Puskas, telephone newsreader, telephone exchange, radio, inventor, Edison, Bell, telephonograph, songtelephone
ERNŐ RUBIK - creator of the Rubik Cube
July 13, 1944, Budapest –
Engineer, inventor, creator of the Rubik Cube
Rubik graduated college as an architectural engineer, and then studied interior design. He worked as an architect and designer, and was a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts from 1970 to 1988. He was awarded a senior professorship in 1987.
In 1975, Ernő Rubik designed the Rubik Cube, which conquered the world. It was Toy of the Year in many nations in 1980–1981, and there was even a Rubik Cube world championship at the time. He set up his own workshop, called Rubik Studio in 1983, and it has been in operation under his leadership ever since.
Rubik has designed several other successful toys, such as the Rubik snake, but none were as groundbreaking as the cube. In 1988, Rubik established the Rubik International Foundation, in 1990 he became president of the Academy of Hungarian Engineers, and he has been its honorary president since 1996. Rubik received the State Prize in 1983, and the Dennis Gabor prize for his innovations in 1995.
Ernő Rubik is currently interested in computers. He is seeking interfaces to change the relationship between the computer and the user.
Erno Rubik, inventor, designer, Rubik Cube
HANS SELYE - Physician, designer of stress theory
January 26, 1907, Vienna – October 16, 1982, Montreal
Physician, designer of stress theory
Hans (János) Selye studied medicine at the German university in Prague, and then in Paris and Rome. He became a physician in 1929 and chose a career in research. In 1929, he joined the staff of the Institute of Pathology in Prague, and then moved to the United States in 1931 on receiving a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship. Later, he moved to Canada where he taught biochemistry at McGill University in Montreal.
He was a professor at the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the University of Montreal from 1945 to 1976, also serving as general adviser for surgery to the United States Armed Forces. In 1976, he became president of the International Institute for Stress Research.
Janos Selye’s work included numerous areas of physiology. He was concerned with endocrinology, cardiac cell death, the problem of steroid anaesthesia and hormone regulation. Selye is best known for his stress theory.
Hans Selye held honorary doctorates at 18 universities, was a member of the Canadian Academy of Sciences and 43 scientific societies, was declared an honorary citizen of many cities and countries, and held many high-ranking awards. He wrote a number of books including The Stress of Life, From Dream to Discovery, In Vivo: The Case for Supramolecular Biology, and Stress without Distress.
Janos Selye, Hans Selye, physician, stress theory
SIR GEORG SOLTI - Conductor
October 21, 1912, Budapest - September 5, 1997, Antibes
Conductor
Georg Solti studied at the Budapest Academy of Music, as a disciple of Arnold Székely (piano) and Albert Siklós (composition). In 1930 his instructors included Béla Bartók, Ernst von Dohnányi and Zoltán Kodály. From 1930 to 1937 he was the conductor for the Budapest Opera House. In 1937-1938, he worked as an assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival.
Solti moved to Switzerland in 1939. From 1946 to 1952 he was the music director of the Bavarian State Opera, and from 1952 to 1961, he was chief music director in Frankfurt. From 1961 to 1971 he was music director of Covent Garden Opera, and from 1969 he was chief conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He served as musical advisor to the Paris Opera from 1971 to 1973.
In 1979, Sir Georg Solti became chief conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1990 he became chief music director of the Salzburg Festival.
In 1942 he won first prize at the Geneva international piano competition.
Solti was knighted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth in 1972, in recognition of his excellence as a conductor. His recordings have won numerous prizes throughout the world. Sir Georg Solti received the Bartók Award in 1990 and the Leonard Bernstein Prize in 1995.
ISTVÁN SZABÓ - Film director
February 18, 1938, Budapest –
Film director
Szabó is a graduate of the Academy of Theatre and Cinematic Arts. He began his career with personal poetic short films such as Concert, Variations on a Theme, and You. His first feature film was Age of Daydreaming. He followed with descriptions of generations of people (Father, A Love film, and 25, Fireman’s Street), followed by Budapest Tales, an allegorical study.
In 1979 he filmed, Confidence, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and in 1981 his film Mephisto, based on a novel by Klaus Mann won the Academy Award for the best foreign film. Two other Szabó films were nominated for Academy Awards, Colonel Redl, and Hanussen.
Szabó also regularly directed television films and even directed an opera. He has been vice-president of the European Academy of Cinematic Arts since 1991, and is a member of several domestic and international cinematic institutions. He holds the Kossuth Prize. He received the Joseph Pulitzer Memorial Award in 1996, for a series of programs called A Century of Movies broadcast by Hungarian public television. In 1997, he won the Corvinus Prize of the Europa Institute of Budapest. This prize is awarded to persons with outstanding merits in culture, science and politics in promoting a relationship between the Hungarian government and other nations of Europe.
He has also worked extensively as a teacher. He has instructed at the Academy of Theater and Cinematic Arts since 1985.
His film, Sunshine, premiered in 1999, received the European Film Award and in 2000 the U.S. National Board of Reviewed selected it as one of the top ten films of the year.
Istvan Szabo, director, Age of Daydreaming, Father, A Love film, 25, Fireman’s Street, Budapest Tales, Confidence, Mephisto, Colonel Redl, Hanussen, Sunshine
JÁNOS SZENTÁGOTHAI - Biochemist, neuroscientist
October 31, 1912, Budapest - September 8, 1994, Budapest
Biochemist, neuroscientist
János Szentágothai received his degree in medicine from the Budapest University of Medicine in 1936. He advanced quickly as a university instructor, becoming certified as a professor or neurological anatomy in 1942. Szentágothai became a professor of anatomy at the Pécs (South Hungary) University of Medicine, and director of the university’s Institute of Anatomy in 1946. From 1963 to 1977, he headed the Institute of Anatomy at the Semmelweis University of Medicine in Budapest, where he also chaired the department of anatomy. From 1973 to 1977 Szentágothai was vice-president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and from 1977 to 1985 he was its president.
Szentágothai continued his research projects throughout his life. He was particularly interested in eye movement, balance, the mechanisms of the central nervous system, reflex mechanisms of the brain stem, and the structures of neural inhibitors and of higher-level neuronal centers. Szentágothai made significant discoveries about the gray matter in the temporal regions of the cerebellum. Eventually, his research became focused primarily on neural synapses. One volume he wrote was entitled, The Brainstem as a Neural Machine.
Szentágothai was a popular speaker at international congresses, and played leading roles in numerous domestic and international organizations.
Szentágothai, biochemist, neuroscientist, eye movement, balance, central nervous system, reflex mechanisms of the brain stem, neural inhibitors, neuronal centers, gray matter in the temporal regions of the cerebellum, neural synapses, The Brainstem as a Neural Machine
ALBERT SZENT-GYÖRGYI - Biochemist
September 16, 1893, Budapest – October 22, 1986, Woods Hole, MA
Nobel Prize Winning biochemist
Szent-Györgyi received a degree in medicine in Budapest in 1917. He spent the next ten years traveling around the world, and received a PhD in chemistry at Cambridge. He returned to Hungary and became a professor and faculty head at Szeged University in 1928, where he established a research base in biology.
While studying cellular respiration, Szent-Györgyi isolated Vitamin-C from green peppers in 1930, naming it ascorbic acid. He was the only Hungarian to receive the Nobel Prize for scientific work actually done in Hungary, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1937 “for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid.”
During World War II, Szent-Györgyi played a significant role in assisting Hungary’s efforts to reach a separate peace, participating in several rounds of secret negotiations. From 1945 to 1947, he taught at the Budapest University of Science.
Szent-Györgyi moved to the United States in 1947, continuing his research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. He was particularly interested in cellular respiration, cellular oxidation, the biochemistry of muscles, bioelectronics, biogenetics and the inception and treatment of cancer. Szent-Györgyi taught at Dartmouth College from 1962 to 1971. He always maintained contacts with Hungary, and regularly returned for visits, starting in the 1960s.
Since 1987, the Szeged University of Medicine bears his name. Szent-Györgyi’s publications include The Living State and Cancer, Bioelectronics, Biogenetics, Introduction of Sub-molecular Biology, and Intrinsic Cardiac Rate Regulation.
Albert Szent-Györgyi, biochemist, isolated vitamin C, received Nobel Prize for Medicine
LEO SZILARD - Physicist, biophysicist, nuclear scientist
February 11, 1898, Budapest – May 30, 1964, La Jolla, CA
Physicist, biophysicist, nuclear scientist
Leo Szilard (Leó Szilárd) received his PhD in Berlin, and for a time worked alongside Einstein. After Hitler came to power, he moved to Vienna, London, and finally, the United States. In 1939, together with Enrico Fermi, he began studying ways to achieve uranium fission, and then helped create the first nuclear reactor. Fermi and Szilard patented the nuclear reactor, but after the war they sold the patent to the United States of America for a symbolic one dollar.
While still in Berlin Szilard wrote an article on the relationship between information theory and thermodynamic entropy, which, today, is the foundation of information theory and brain research.
In the hope that it could be used against Hitler, in 1939 Szilard, together with Fermi, Eugene Wigner, Einstein and Edward Teller, wrote a letter to U.S. President Roosevelt on the possibility of using uranium fission as a military weapon. The U.S. government initiated the Manhattan Project, which was aimed at creating an atomic bomb. After World War II ended, Szilard and Einstein warned the U.S. government that there was no need to use the bomb, and called on U.S. and Soviet scientists to cooperate to prevent an arms race. At this time, he began applying methods of physics research to biology.
When he taught in Chicago and California, it was as a professor of biology. He is often described as the creator of biophysics.
In 1960, he received the Ford Foundation’s Atoms for Peace Award for efforts in the peaceful use of atomic energy.
Leo Szilard (Leó Szilárd), physicist, biophysicist, nuclear scientist, nuclear reactor, information theory, brain research, biophysics, use of atomic energy
EDWARD TELLER - Physicist, father of the H-bomb
January 15, 1908, Budapest – September 9, 2003, Stanford, CA
Physicist
Edward (Ede) Teller studied at Budapest Technical University, at the chemical engineering faculty of Karlsruhe University, and then at the physics faculties of universities in Munich and Leipzig, receiving at PhD at the age of 22. He began working in Göttingen, and then moved to London University and to Copenhagen.
He arrived in the United States in 1935, where he was already well known. He became a professor at George Washington University in Washington DC, and became increasingly interested in nuclear physics. He taught at Columbia University in 1941 and 1942.
At this time, research to develop an atomic bomb had begun the United States, in the hope that it would put an early end to World War II. He joined the staff of the National Laboratory at Los Alamos in February 1943, eventually becoming its deputy director. In 1952 and 1953 he was a consultant at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, and then became a professor of physics, a post he held from 1953 to 1970. Since 1975, he has been a senior staff member at the Hoover Institute.
He played a major role in designing the American hydrogen bomb and became known as “the father of the H-bomb.”
The most significant areas of his research were in nuclear physics, and the theory of thermonuclear processes. He published a book, The Legacy of Hiroshima.
In December 1997, he received the award for Famous Hungarians, and in 2001 he was the first person to receive Hungary’s Corvin Chain Award, presented by the prime minister to recognise outstanding achievement in science, the arts, education and culture.
Edward Teller - Physicist, father of the H-bomb, nuclear physics, theory of thermonuclear processes
TAMÁS VÁSÁRY - Pianist, conductor
August 11, 1938, Debrecen -
Pianist, conductor
Vásáry’s exceptional talent was recognised while he was still a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. He won the Liszt Piano Competition in 1948. In 1955, he won the Long Competition in Paris, and the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. He moved to Switzerland in 1956, and lived in London since the early 1960s. He regularly performs throughout the world, and has often appeared as a conductor since 1971.
He has recorded almost all of Chopin’s and Liszt’s compositions for piano.
He was chief conductor with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and chief conductor of the Hungarian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra since 1993. He is a Swiss citizen.
In 2001, he received the Chavalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest arts award in France.
Tamás Vásáry, pianist, conductor
Hungarian Nobel Prize Winners
PHILIPP E. A. VON LENARD
June 7, 1862, Pozsony – May 20, 1947, Messelhausen
Philippe Lenard (Fülöp Lénárd) received 1905 Nobel Prize in Physics for “his work on cathode rays.” He lived in Germany and did not consider himself a Hungarian.
ROBERT BÁRÁNY
April 22, 1876, Vienna – April 8, 1936, Uppsala
Robert (Róbert) Bárány received the Nobel Prize in Medicine “for his work on the physiology and pathology of the vestibular apparatus.” He lived in Sweden.
RICHARD A. ZSIGMONDY
April 1, 1865, Vienna – September 23, 1929, Göttingen
Richard (Richárd) Zsigmondy received the 1925 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his demonstration of the heterogeneous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid chemistry.” He lived in Germany.
ALBERT SZENT-GYÖRGYI
September 16, 1893, Budapest – October 22, 1986, Woods Hole, MA
Albert Szent-Györgyi received the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine “for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid.” He was a professor at Szeged University in Hungary from 1928 to 1945, and moved to the United States in 1947.
GEORGE DE HEVESY
August 1, 1885, Budapest – July 5, 1966, Freiburg im Breisgau
George de Hevesy (György Hevesy) received the 1943 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for “for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes.” He lived in Germany, Denmark and Sweden.
GEORG VON BÉKÉSY
June 3, 1899, Budapest – June 12, 1972, Honolulu, HI
Georg von Békésy (György Békésy) received the 1961 Nobel Prize in Medicine “for his discoveries of the physical mechanism of stimulation within the cochlea.” He lived in the United States.
EUGENE P. WIGNER
November 17, 1902, Budapest – January 1, 1995, Princeton, NJ
Eugene Wigner (Jenő Wigner) received the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles.” He lived in the United States.
DENNIS GABOR
June 5, 1900, Budapest, – February 9, 1979, London
Dennis Gabor (Dénes Gábor) received the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his invention and development of the holographic method.” He lived in Great Britain.
JOHN C. POLANYI
January 23, 1929, Berlin –
John Polanyi (János Polányi) is the son of natural scientist Mihály Polányi. He shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.” He lives in Canada.
GEORGE A. OLAH
May 22, 1927, Budapest –
George Olah (György Oláh) received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “for his contribution to carbocation chemistry.” He lives in the United States.
JOHN C. HARSANYI
May 29, 1920, Budapest – August 9, 2000, Berkeley, CA
John Harsanyi (János Harsányi) shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for “pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games.” Relying on the theory designed by his fellow prize-winners, he showed how to analyse games when information was incomplete, creating the foundation for “information economics”. He lived in the United States.
IMRE KERTÉSZ
November 9, 1929, Budapest –
He received the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature “for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.” His books centre on the horrors of the 20th century: hatred, genocide and the inhumanity in human souls.
famous Hungarians, known Hungarians, Hungarian Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Medicine, Chemistry, Economics, Literature
