LOVÁSZ, László
President, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
President, World Science Forum
László Lovász was born March 9, 1948 in Budapest. His fields of research include combinatorial optimization, graph theory, theoretical computer science. He played a central role in the process of systemization of combinatorial theory and graph theory.
His mathematical gift led to early achievements solving several open problems, writing a paper at the age of seventeen and publishing it in a famous mathematical journal, and winning gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad competition for three consecutive years (1964, 1965, 1966). He received the degrees Candidate of Math. Sci. (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1970); Dr.Rhr.Nat. (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest 1971); Dr.Math.Sci. (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1977).
Until 1975, he had worked at Eötvös Loránd University, and then he went on to chair the Department of Geometry at the University of Szeged between 1975 and 1982. In 1982, he returned to Eötvös Loránd University, where he established the Department of Computer Science.
During the 1990s, Prof. Lovász was a professor at the Department of Computer Science at Yale University and until 2006, he was a collaborative member of the Microsoft Research Center. After his return to Eötvös Loránd University he served as the director of its Mathematical Institute (2006–2011).
He was awarded the Brouwer Medal in 1993, the Wolf Prize in 1999, the Bolyai Prize in 2007 and Hungary's Széchenyi Grand Prize (2008). He received the Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (2008). He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Science (2010).
He served as President of the International Mathematical Union between 2007 and 2010. In 2014, he was elected President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.