Mathematician:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/Hungary

For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.

The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten.

-- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London

Hungary

Johann Andreas Segner $($$\text {1704}$ – $\text {1777}$$)$

Hungarian scientist best known for inventing the Segner wheel.
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Farkas Wolfgang Bolyai $($$\text {1775}$ – $\text {1856}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician, mainly known for his work in geometry.
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János Bolyai $($$\text {1802}$ – $\text {1860}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who was one of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry.
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Gyula Kőnig $($$\text {1849}$ – $\text {1913}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician best known nowadays for his work in the embryonic field of set theory.

Was opposed to the work of Cantor and spent much effort trying to disprove his work.

Father of Dénes Kőnig.
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József Kürschák $($$\text {1864}$ – $\text {1933}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician noted for his work on trigonometry and for his creation of the theory of valuations.
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Frigyes Riesz $($$\text {1880}$ – $\text {1956}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who developed the field of functional analysis.

Gave an elementary proof of the Mean Ergodic Theorem.

Elder brother of the mathematician Marcel Riesz.
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Dénes Kőnig $($$\text {1884}$ – $\text {1944}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who was a pioneer of graph theory.

The son of Gyula Kőnig.
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Alfréd Haar $($$\text {1885}$ – $\text {1933}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who best known for his work on analysis on groups.

Introduced the Haar measure.
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Michael Fekete $($$\text {1886}$ – $\text {1957}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician and set theorist who worked on the transfinite diameter of a set.
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Marcel Riesz $($$\text {1886}$ – $\text {1969}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who worked on analysis, number theory and abstract algebra, among other fields.

Younger brother of the mathematician Frigyes Riesz.
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George Pólya $($$\text {1887}$ – $\text {1985}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician best known nowadays for the books he wrote.
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Gábor Szegő $($$\text {1895}$ – $\text {1985}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician best known nowadays for his collaborations with George Pólya.
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Steven Vajda $($$\text {1901}$ – $\text {1995}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician whose main work was in game theory and mathematical programming.
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Eugene Paul Wigner $($$\text {1902}$ – $\text {1995}$$)$

Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and mathematician.
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Rózsa Péter $($$\text {1905}$ – $\text {1977}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician best known for her work in recursion theory.
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George Szekeres $($$\text {1911}$ – $\text {2005}$$)$

Hungarian, later Australian, mathematician who worked mainly in geometry and combinatorics.
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Tibor Gallai $($$\text {1912}$ – $\text {1992}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who worked in combinatorics, especially in graph theory.
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Paul Erdős $($$\text {1913}$ – $\text {1996}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician known for the vast quantity of work he did (approximately 1500 papers).

Spent his entire life travelling the world looking for interesting mathematical problems to solve.

Interesting to him often meant: easy to state, but difficult to solve.

Perhaps most famous for his widespread collaborations (about 500 collaborators), from which the concept of the Erdős Number emerged.
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Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy $($$\text {1913}$ – $\text {1998}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician who contributed to the theory of Fourier series and approximation theory.

His most important achievements were made in functional analysis, especially in the theory of Hilbert space operators.
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Paul Richard Halmos $($$\text {1916}$ – $\text {2006}$$)$

Hungarian-born mathematician who made fundamental advances in the areas of probability theory, statistics, operator theory, ergodic theory and functional analysis (in particular, Hilbert spaces).

Also famous for his widely-cited book Naive Set Theory.
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Raoul Bott $($$\text {1923}$ – $\text {2005}$$)$

Hungarian-American mathematician known for numerous basic contributions to geometry.
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Steven Alexander Gaal $($$\text {1924}$ – $\text {2016}$$)$

Hungarian-American mathematician known for his writings on topology.
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László Fuchs $($$\text {b. 1924}$$)$

Hungarian-American mathematician known for his research and textbooks in group theory and abstract algebra.
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Peter David Lax $($$\text {b. 1926}$$)$

Hungarian-born American mathematician working in the areas of pure and applied mathematics.

Made important contributions to integrable systems, fluid dynamics and shock waves, solitonic physics, hyperbolic conservation laws, and mathematical and scientific computing, among other fields.
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Richard Emeric Quandt $($$\text {b. 1930}$$)$

Hungarian economist famous for analysing the results of wine-tasting events.
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András Hajnal $($$\text {1931}$ – $\text {2016}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician best known for his work in known for his work in set theory and combinatorics.
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Gyula O.H. Katona $($$\text {b. 1941}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician best known for his work in the field of combinatorial set theory.

Proved the Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem.

Father of Gyula Y. Katona, who works in similar fields.
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Béla Bollobás $($$\text {b. 1943}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician, now British, who has worked in various areas of mathematics, including functional analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, and percolation.
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Ernő Rubik $($$\text {b. 1944}$$)$

Hungarian inventor and architect best known for inventing Rubik's cube.
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László Lovász $($$\text {b. 1948}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician, best known for his work in combinatorics.
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András Frank $($$\text {b. 1949}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician, working in combinatorics, especially in graph theory, and combinatorial optimisation.
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Gyula Y. Katona $($$\text {b. 1965}$$)$

Hungarian mathematician working mainly in graph theory.

The son of Gyula O.H. Katona.
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