Foregoers - Sciences

(b. 1900, d. 1996) Maria Telkes first became interested in the problems of solar power as a high-school student. She came to the United States in 1925 with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Budapest. After working at several public and private organizations as a researcher, in 1939 she came to the […]

(b. 3/26/1913, Budapest, d. 9/20/1996 Warsaw) Erdős, do this his overly protective mother, was mostly home educated until his late teenage years.  His genius was discovered at a very early age, when at 3 after having been introduced to integers and subtraction, he derived negative numbers. Since his father introduced him to prime numbers at […]

(b. 12/13/1887 Budapest, d. 9/7/1985 Palo Alto, California) Born and raised in Budapest, Hungary, Polya worked in probability, analysis, number theory, geometry, combinatorics and mathematical physics. He left Hungary for Brown University for two years and later took up an appointment at Stanford. He enjoyed the esteem of the mathematical community not only for his […]

(b. 3/30/21 Budapest, d. 2/1/70 Budapest) Alfréd Rényi received a literary, rather than scientific, schooling in Budapest and Szeged. His studies were interrupted in 1944, when he was forced to a Nazi Labor Camp, but somehow managed to escape and even rescue his parents from the ghetto. After the war he finished his PhD studies […]

Ern? Rubik (Hungarian: [?rubik ??rnø?]; born 13 July 1944) is a Hungarian inventor, architect and professor of architecture. He is best known for the invention of mechanical puzzles including Rubik’s Cube (1974), Rubik’s Magic, Rubik’s Magic: Master Edition, Rubik’s Snake.