Lovasz, Laszlo

Mathematician

László Lovász was born in 1948 in Budapest. In his first year at Mihály Fazekas Teacher Training College he had a special curriculum in mathematics. He won almost all the competitions in mathematics (Who's best in...?, KöMaL - Mathematics and Physics Journal for Secondary School Students -, OKTV - National Secondary School Students Competition- , International Students Olympics in Mathematics, the Schweitzer competition etc.). He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Lóránd Eötvös University in 1971. As a student in his fourth year, he defended his post-graduate thesis on the factors of graphs; the result, internationally renowned, was the proof of perfect graph conjecture. In 1979 he resolved one of the most celebrated problems in information theory, the Shannon problem. His article became the publication of the year in the IEEE Transaction Information Theory journal. He became an academic at the age of 31. He is a pioneer in the spread of algorithmic thinking and one of the leading figures in theoretical computer science. In 1999 he was awarded the Wolf Prize, considered to be the Nobel of mathematicians.

What do Computers Demand from and Give to Mathematics?