Petrovay, Kristof

solar physicist

He was born in Budapest in 1963. After completing his secondary education in Trefort Grammar School, he continued his studies at Loránd Eötvös University (ELTE), from which he graduated in 1987 as a physicist and astronomer. He then pursued postgraduate studies at the Department of Astronomy of ELTE and the Sub-Department of Theoretical Physics of Oxford University. After earning his doctorate, from 1991 he worked for four years as a senior assistant professor, and subsequently for another four years as a research fellow at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. He has been an associate professor at ELTE since 1999 and a doctor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) since 2004. His field of specialisation is theoretical astrophysics, solar physics and astrophysical magneto-hydrodynamics. He is the author of some forty scientific publications and a university textbook, as well as the editor of several books. He has spent considerable time on several study trips at research institutes and universities in the USA, Germany and India. In 2000 he was the recipient of the Széchenyi Professor Scholarship, followed by the István Széchenyi Scholarship in 2003. In 2006 he was awarded the MTA Prize in Physics. He is a member of numerous Hungarian and international scientific societies, as well as the secretary of the Committee of Astronomy and Space Physics of MTA.

At the Gate of the Sun