Hungarian Scientist Sites

This continues reporting on my pilgrimage to sites associated with famed Hungarian/Hungarian-American scientists. Last year's visit is covered in the Budapest Gymnasiums post. At the end of last year's post was my intent to visit the site of the former Minta Gymnasium. Today it is an elementary school, the Trefort School of the ELTE University. Founded as a high school (gymnasium) by Theodore von Karman's father, the school emphasized hands-on, students-discovering-things-for-themselves learning. Edward Teller, who was 20-some years younger than Theodore von Karman, was also a student at the Minta Gymnasium.

The school is on a very short street, Trefort utca. In fact the school building occcupies about half the length of the street. It was cloudy with light rain the day I walked by. But it was also warm, and so the windows were open. There was a constant buzz of activity from inside, so I guess the hands-on learning technique still applies.

The building on the left, on the Báthori utca corner of Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, is where John von Neumann (Neumann János) was born and where he lived until he was eighteen. There are plaques on both sides of the display window. The plaque on the left side (in line with the man standing in front of the stop sign) was installed jointly by the American Mathematical Society and its Hungarian counterpart on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Neumann János, in 2003. The top half of the plaque is in Hungarian, repeated in English on the bottom half. The plaque on the right, Hungarian only, explains that it was originally installed in 1987 and then reinstalled in 2004 by the Hungarian Computer Science Society, recognizing his pioneering work in that field also.



Before revisiting Budapest, I drove to Szeged. Szeged was home to beloved writer Ferenc Móra, who also did archaeological excavations around Szeged. The University of Szeged, pictured below, was home for the mathematician Frigyes Riesz, and for the Nobel prize-winner biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi.

There is a park/square at the spot pictured above (and below) that is one of several connected by an extensive network of pedestrian-friendly corridors. Along the corridors are numerous street-side cafes, and restored old palatial buildings. A very pleasant city in which to watch the world go by on a summer evening.