Hungarian Mathematician Elected Honorary Doctor of Yale University

On May 20, 2024, Yale University in the United States elected nine outstanding individuals as honorary doctorate recipients. László Lovász, mathematician and research professor at the HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, who had taught at the prestigious university for more than half a decade, was awarded the title of Doctor of Engineering and Technology at the ceremony, HUN-REN research center’s website reads.

The awarding of honorary degrees in recognition of pioneering, outstanding achievement or exemplary contributions to the public good has been a tradition at Yale University since 1702. László Lovász is a brilliant mathematician and theoretical computer scientist whose pioneering work in combinatorics, a branch of pure mathematics, has led to real-life applications in computer science, engineering, and statistics, the university writes.

Over time you have received nearly every award a mathematician can earn, including the Abel Prize, the highest award in mathematics.

We are honored that you have agreed to receive one more, from the university where you taught and conducted research for over a half decade, and which itself is honored to present you with the degree of Doctor of Engineering and Technology,” said the President of Yale University at the doctoral conferral ceremony.

For his findings and expansive influence, he has been recognized with the Hungarian National Order of Merit (1998), the Knuth and Wolf prizes (both in 1999), the Gödel Prize (2001), the Kyoto Prize (2010), and the Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, co-conferred by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Programming Society (2012). His citation for the Abel Prize (2021) — mathematics’ equivalent of the Nobel Prize — lauds his “outstanding contributions to the advancement of both the academic and technological possibilities of the mathematical sciences.”

He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 scientific publications and ten books.

Via hun-ren.hu, yale.edu; Featured image: Facebook/Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem – ELTE