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Mathematician László Lovász awarded Charles University Honorary degree

On Wednesday, March 4th, the Hungarian mathematician László Lovász was awarded the honorary degree doctor honoris causa of mathematics in the Great Hall of the Carolinum. He received the honour for his outstanding scientific results in graph theory and combinatorics and also for extensive scientific collaboration with Charles University.

Professor László Lovász is a world-renowned mathematician and a leader of graph theory and combinatorics, whose work and influence transcends individual disciplines. By unifying mathematical and computer science (or algorithmic) thinking he obtained exceptional results in very different areas such as number theory, probability, optimization or complexity of algorithms. During his scientific career, he tackled many outstanding problems that were long thought to be unsolvable. Moreover, his solutions were often elegant and started new mathematical theories.

Lovász was born in 1948 in Budapest. His exceptional mathematical talent was discovered early on: he won a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad for three consecutive years. He spent many years abroad, was a professor at Yale University in the 1990s and was a Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research in Redmond. In 2006, he returned to his native Hungary and became a professor at University Loránda Eötvöse, where he was director of the Mathematical Institute (2006–2011). He was the president of the International Mathematical Union from 2007 until 2010. Since 2014, he has been the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Besides his many official posts and services to the math community, he is still an active scientist. He is a co-investigator of ERC Synergy grant DYNASNET together with L. A. Barabasim from CEU Vienna and Jaroslav Nešetřil from Charles University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Physics.

Prof. Lovasz has longstanding contacts with Charles University: in 1986 he delivered the first of the famous Mathematical Colloquia here. “I appreciate fruitful collaboration, many publications, and Zameček conferences. My fondest memories of collaboration with Charles University are of Winter School in the mountains. The combination of skiing and outstanding lectures from which I personally learned a lot, was great,” Prof. Lovász said after the ceremony.

Prof. Lovázs also shared with iForum what he is particularly proud of in his outstanding scientific career: “I will mention one result, the practical application of one special algorithm. The idea was completely motivated by basic research. It had nothing to do with the applications in the first line and then it turned out that it became very fundamental in computer security systems. So it became very well applicable.”

In the end, Prof. Lovász shared his vision about the future of mathematics: “Math is on the upswing. Traditionally, the application areas of mathematics were physics and engineering. Nowadays, biology and medical sciences need more and more mathematics. Math has an important role in understanding complex systems like the ecology, society or human body and brain,” he said.