Hungarian Mathematician Accepts Award via Video from Ukrainian Front

Viktor Traski, a Hungarian mathematician from Transcarpathia, thanked the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) for the János Arany Young Researcher Award in a video sent from the front in eastern Ukraine.

According to the MTA’s statement, the researcher and lecturer of the Uzhhorod National University (Ungvári Nemzeti Egyetem) who teaches real and complex function theory, functional analysis, and probability, is a soldier in the Ukrainian army fighting in the Russian-Ukrainian war, and could not be present at Tuesday’s ceremony.

I am confident that after these bad times of the coronavirus and war, there will be better, brighter times ahead, and then I can personally thank you, deliver you live presentations, and toast to new achievements. Best regards and best wishes from Eastern Ukraine, Viktor,”

the mathematician said. Distant explosions could also be heard in the video as the mathematician described his research topic.

The Hungarian Democratic Alliance of Ukraine wrote about Traski: “He had not previously served in the armed forces, nor had he been trained in the military faculty of the university, so he had no military, let alone combat, experience. Consequently, he was not a reservist either, so he was not subject to the current wave of mobilization, i.e. he could have continued teaching his students or engaging in appropriate academic work…However, in the first days of the Russian military invasion, the university professor volunteered at the military supplementary headquarters and became a soldier of the 128th Mountain Brigade.”

“Quadratic φ-SubGaussian random values and processes” would have been the topic of the lecture by the award-winning Traski at the External Members’ Forum at the 195th General Assembly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Featured image: Prize-winning mathematician Viktor Traski checking in from Ukraine. Screen capture from the YouTube video on MTA 1825’s channel.