6 ms·

Why is Hungarian math so forward looking but not the other subjects? Is Hungary especially good at math?

by koube 9y ago

underwoodley 9y ago
It's difficult to generalize, but by pretty much any metric you choose Hungary produced a massively disproportionate share of the outstanding mathematicians of the twentieth century.
- tehlike 9y ago
  can you give couple examples that are most prominent?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - richchurcher 9y ago
    Would Paul Erdős be the most famous? There's even a Wikipedia subcategory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_Hungarian_mathematicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_Hungaria....
  - niftich 9y ago
    János Bolyai [1], Theodore von Kármán [2], Leo Szilard [3], Dennis Gabor [4], Edward Teller [5], Paul Erdős [6], John von Neumann [7]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1nos_Bolyai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1nos_Bolyai [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_Kármán https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_Kármán [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
    - tehlike 9y ago
      I am curious if it's because they are hungarian, or because they are jewish. Jews pay particular attention to science and arts, from what I gather from my jewish friends. Nobel laureates, for example, have disproportionate amount of jewish among them (compared to jewish population as a percentage of world population).
      - underwoodley 9y ago
        You don't have to be curious for more than five minutes. Several of those mentioned are Jewish, but most of them are not. There are not disproportionately more Jewish Hungarian mathematicians, compared to the proportion of say, Jewish people in Budapest before WWII, or the proportion of Jewish people in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Looking only at the first half of the twentieth century, there at least as many world-ranking mathematicians from Hungary as from Poland, a country with a strong mathematical tradition, a much larger population, and a massively larger Jewish population (around a quarter of the Jewish people in the world in the 1930s). It's worth adding that comparing the proportion of Jewish Nobel prize winners to Jewish people in the world might not be a fair comparison. Much of this can probably be explained by the strong correlation between being European (including Russian/Soviet) or American, and being a Nobel prize winner.
        ezequiel-garzon 9y ago
        You don’t have to be very curious to find out that about 22% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish [1], which leaves your controversial Western population at under 100 million even stretching the worldwide Jewish population to 20 million. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureat...
        roi 9y ago
        Except for Bolyai, all mentioned above are indeed Jewish. Also all mentioned in your other comment (Fejér etc.) except Bollobás. Also Wigner, mentioned in another comment.
  - moab 9y ago
    http://www.jurisich-koszeg.sulinet.hu/files/projekt/science/The_most_famous_Hungarian_Scientists.pdf http://www.jurisich-koszeg.sulinet.hu/files/projekt/science/... The first 5 pages have names that are attached to lots and lots of theorems (disproportionately in combinatorics).
    - a_imho 9y ago
      George Olah passed away in March.
  - a_imho 9y ago
    Recently Laszlo Babai, Endre Szemeredi, Mario Szegedy In undergraduate studies the names Denes Konig, Tibor Gallai also come up discussing graphs.
  - 0xdada 9y ago
    Here's a footnote about Hungarian mathematicians in the 20th century from Prime Obsession. Amazing book by the way, highly recommended. George Pólya (1887−1985). Look at those dates—another immortal. Pólya was Hungarian. Even more striking than the rise of the Germans in the early nineteenth century was the rise of Hungarians in the early twentieth. While the German states (excluding Austria and Switzerland) in 1800 had about 24 million people, the Hungarian-speaking population of Hungary was around 8.7 million in 1900, and I believe never rose above 10 million. This small and obscure nation produced an astonishing proportion of the world’s finest mathematicians: Bollobás, Erdélyi, Erdős, Fejér, Haar, Kerékjártó, two Kőnigs, Kürschák, Lakatos, Radó, Rényi, two Rieszes, Szász, Szegő, Szokefalvi-Nagy, Turán, von Neumann, and I have probably missed a few. There is a modest literature attempting to explain this phenomenon. Pólya himself thought that the major factor was Fejér (1880−1959), an inspiring teacher and gifted administrator, who attracted and encouraged mathematical talent. A high proportion of the great Hungarian mathematicians (including Fejér) were Jewish—or, like Pólya’s parents, “social” converts to Christianity, of originally Jewish stock.
friendly_chap 9y ago
I believe history and literature are sensitive subjects politically, hence the official ways of teaching it are somewhat limiting (intentionally). However, most teachers I had contact with/heard of are exceptionally good, so I guess it comes down to luck.
niftich 9y ago
I would say it's always been a bit of a self-affirming, self-fulfilling trope among Hungarians that Hungarians are good at math and science. Some of it is founded in history, and some of it is (make-believe) national mythos. But that's just local color; I don't actually know if it's true at all, or any time in the recent past.
patkai 9y ago
This question is not just worth understanding in itself but it would be essential to ask at many levels, as science education is becoming the key to the survival of humanity. As a Hungarian who left the country 20 years ago I have been fascinated by this surprising success of the country, partly because I did not personally get a good science education there. Actually, it was very unbalanced, with most of it barely mediocre, while some of it absolutely brilliant. The successful people came from 2-3 high schools (or "gymnasiums", for ages 12-18) in Budapest in the beginning of the 20th century, and whatever success Hungary had in the natural sciences was mostly a result of the work and heritage of that generation. There is a very good description of this in Norman MacRae's book on John von Neumann, worth reading. A quick summary of the "reasons": 1. Boom: at that time (from 1867 till WWI) Budapest was booming, more attractive to immigrants than New York. Actually, most of the city you can see today was built in those times. 2. Culture: as a result of the boom and the wave of immigrants it became a very liberal and open minded place (though this did not apply to the feudal class at all - their kids typically became soldiers or playboys) 3. Motivation: in a feudal society studying and intellectual eminence was the way to go unless you were born an aristocrat. Parents, students, teachers were willing to put time and money necessary to make their kids excel. This may not sound unusual with all those helicopter parents you see nowadays, but actually this was huge. Imagine growing up in a family where you knew - and your whole family knew - that your only chance of making it is to be the best at math your abilities allow. 4. Education: I don't know where to start, so I can only give examples. Imagine you are a 12 year old child and your teacher borrows you his favourite papers on quantum physics and asks your opinion on them. Then you give a smart comment and your teacher contacts the relevant professor at the university to have a tea with you at your house next Sunday. 5. Language: most of these kids learned Latin and Greek, and in before their teenage years also spoke at least German fluently. 6. The "marble table": Stanislaw Ulam (in his autobiography, another amazing read) and also MacRae tells about the most important ingredient, the marble table at the café (the easy-to-erase whiteboard of the time). In Central Europe mathematicians met at cafeterias, discussed all day (often meaning 12 hour days at a cafe!), challenged each other, and did rarely work in isolation, not worrying too much about "who thought of it first". They happily took young kids in, 15 year olds sipping juice and 50 year old Banach drinking something much stronger (may not have been Banach, but you'll read the book!). It was such a well-known "way of doing math" that the IAS in Princeton was officially established to re-create this culture and pull the typical American professors out of their ivory towers. It is an elitist system, I know, and does not solve mass education challenges. But this small elite circle had an impact on almost everyone in the country's education system. Even if you weren't a Wigner, Teller or Neumann, you spent 6 years in this environment and possibly became a great teacher, similar to the one who taught half of these people, the great László Rácz [1] and taught in this fashion. Also, a similar great science education happened in Japan at some point (50's, I think ), but I only read this as a side note in the book on Neumann. Anyway, it is possible to do this again and with two small kids I'm very interested to know how. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_R%C3%A1tz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_R%C3%A1tz

Why is Hungarian math so forward looking but not the other subjects? Is Hungary especially good at math?

by koube 9y ago

Why is Hungarian math so forward looking but not the other subjects? Is Hungary especially good at math?

It's difficult to generalize, but by pretty much any metric you choose Hungary produced a massively disproportionate share of the outstanding mathematicians of the twentieth century.

tehlike 9y ago
can you give couple examples that are most prominent?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- richchurcher 9y ago
  Would Paul Erdős be the most famous? There's even a Wikipedia subcategory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_Hungarian_mathematicians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_Hungaria....
- niftich 9y ago
  János Bolyai [1], Theodore von Kármán [2], Leo Szilard [3], Dennis Gabor [4], Edward Teller [5], Paul Erdős [6], John von Neumann [7]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1nos_Bolyai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1nos_Bolyai [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_Kármán https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_Kármán [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Gabor [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
  - tehlike 9y ago
    I am curious if it's because they are hungarian, or because they are jewish. Jews pay particular attention to science and arts, from what I gather from my jewish friends. Nobel laureates, for example, have disproportionate amount of jewish among them (compared to jewish population as a percentage of world population).
    - underwoodley 9y ago
      You don't have to be curious for more than five minutes. Several of those mentioned are Jewish, but most of them are not. There are not disproportionately more Jewish Hungarian mathematicians, compared to the proportion of say, Jewish people in Budapest before WWII, or the proportion of Jewish people in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Looking only at the first half of the twentieth century, there at least as many world-ranking mathematicians from Hungary as from Poland, a country with a strong mathematical tradition, a much larger population, and a massively larger Jewish population (around a quarter of the Jewish people in the world in the 1930s). It's worth adding that comparing the proportion of Jewish Nobel prize winners to Jewish people in the world might not be a fair comparison. Much of this can probably be explained by the strong correlation between being European (including Russian/Soviet) or American, and being a Nobel prize winner.
      - ezequiel-garzon 9y ago
        You don’t have to be very curious to find out that about 22% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish [1], which leaves your controversial Western population at under 100 million even stretching the worldwide Jewish population to 20 million. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureat...
      - roi 9y ago
        Except for Bolyai, all mentioned above are indeed Jewish. Also all mentioned in your other comment (Fejér etc.) except Bollobás. Also Wigner, mentioned in another comment.
- moab 9y ago
  http://www.jurisich-koszeg.sulinet.hu/files/projekt/science/The_most_famous_Hungarian_Scientists.pdf http://www.jurisich-koszeg.sulinet.hu/files/projekt/science/... The first 5 pages have names that are attached to lots and lots of theorems (disproportionately in combinatorics).
  - a_imho 9y ago
    George Olah passed away in March.
- a_imho 9y ago
  Recently Laszlo Babai, Endre Szemeredi, Mario Szegedy In undergraduate studies the names Denes Konig, Tibor Gallai also come up discussing graphs.
- 0xdada 9y ago
  Here's a footnote about Hungarian mathematicians in the 20th century from Prime Obsession. Amazing book by the way, highly recommended. George Pólya (1887−1985). Look at those dates—another immortal. Pólya was Hungarian. Even more striking than the rise of the Germans in the early nineteenth century was the rise of Hungarians in the early twentieth. While the German states (excluding Austria and Switzerland) in 1800 had about 24 million people, the Hungarian-speaking population of Hungary was around 8.7 million in 1900, and I believe never rose above 10 million. This small and obscure nation produced an astonishing proportion of the world’s finest mathematicians: Bollobás, Erdélyi, Erdős, Fejér, Haar, Kerékjártó, two Kőnigs, Kürschák, Lakatos, Radó, Rényi, two Rieszes, Szász, Szegő, Szokefalvi-Nagy, Turán, von Neumann, and I have probably missed a few. There is a modest literature attempting to explain this phenomenon. Pólya himself thought that the major factor was Fejér (1880−1959), an inspiring teacher and gifted administrator, who attracted and encouraged mathematical talent. A high proportion of the great Hungarian mathematicians (including Fejér) were Jewish—or, like Pólya’s parents, “social” converts to Christianity, of originally Jewish stock.

friendly_chap 9y ago

I believe history and literature are sensitive subjects politically, hence the official ways of teaching it are somewhat limiting (intentionally). However, most teachers I had contact with/heard of are exceptionally good, so I guess it comes down to luck.

niftich 9y ago

I would say it's always been a bit of a self-affirming, self-fulfilling trope among Hungarians that Hungarians are good at math and science. Some of it is founded in history, and some of it is (make-believe) national mythos. But that's just local color; I don't actually know if it's true at all, or any time in the recent past.

patkai 9y ago

This question is not just worth understanding in itself but it would be essential to ask at many levels, as science education is becoming the key to the survival of humanity. As a Hungarian who left the country 20 years ago I have been fascinated by this surprising success of the country, partly because I did not personally get a good science education there. Actually, it was very unbalanced, with most of it barely mediocre, while some of it absolutely brilliant. The successful people came from 2-3 high schools (or "gymnasiums", for ages 12-18) in Budapest in the beginning of the 20th century, and whatever success Hungary had in the natural sciences was mostly a result of the work and heritage of that generation. There is a very good description of this in Norman MacRae's book on John von Neumann, worth reading. A quick summary of the "reasons": 1. Boom: at that time (from 1867 till WWI) Budapest was booming, more attractive to immigrants than New York. Actually, most of the city you can see today was built in those times. 2. Culture: as a result of the boom and the wave of immigrants it became a very liberal and open minded place (though this did not apply to the feudal class at all - their kids typically became soldiers or playboys) 3. Motivation: in a feudal society studying and intellectual eminence was the way to go unless you were born an aristocrat. Parents, students, teachers were willing to put time and money necessary to make their kids excel. This may not sound unusual with all those helicopter parents you see nowadays, but actually this was huge. Imagine growing up in a family where you knew - and your whole family knew - that your only chance of making it is to be the best at math your abilities allow. 4. Education: I don't know where to start, so I can only give examples. Imagine you are a 12 year old child and your teacher borrows you his favourite papers on quantum physics and asks your opinion on them. Then you give a smart comment and your teacher contacts the relevant professor at the university to have a tea with you at your house next Sunday. 5. Language: most of these kids learned Latin and Greek, and in before their teenage years also spoke at least German fluently. 6. The "marble table": Stanislaw Ulam (in his autobiography, another amazing read) and also MacRae tells about the most important ingredient, the marble table at the café (the easy-to-erase whiteboard of the time). In Central Europe mathematicians met at cafeterias, discussed all day (often meaning 12 hour days at a cafe!), challenged each other, and did rarely work in isolation, not worrying too much about "who thought of it first". They happily took young kids in, 15 year olds sipping juice and 50 year old Banach drinking something much stronger (may not have been Banach, but you'll read the book!). It was such a well-known "way of doing math" that the IAS in Princeton was officially established to re-create this culture and pull the typical American professors out of their ivory towers. It is an elitist system, I know, and does not solve mass education challenges. But this small elite circle had an impact on almost everyone in the country's education system. Even if you weren't a Wigner, Teller or Neumann, you spent 6 years in this environment and possibly became a great teacher, similar to the one who taught half of these people, the great László Rácz [1] and taught in this fashion. Also, a similar great science education happened in Japan at some point (50's, I think ), but I only read this as a side note in the book on Neumann. Anyway, it is possible to do this again and with two small kids I'm very interested to know how. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_R%C3%A1tz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_R%C3%A1tz