Science and technology in Hungary

Science and technology in Hungary has a long history.

The "Berg-Schola", the world's first institute of technology, was founded in Selmecbánya, Kingdom of Hungary (today Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia), in 1735. Its legal successor is the University of Miskolc in Hungary.

BME University is considered the world's oldest institute of technology which has university rank and structure. It was the first institute in Europe to train engineers at university level. The legal predecessor of the university was founded in 1782 by Emperor Joseph II, and was named Latin: Institutum Geometrico-Hydrotechnicum ("Institute of Geometry and Hydrotechnics").

Important names in the 18th century are Maximilian Hell (astronomer), János Sajnovics (linguist), Matthias Bel (polyhistor), Samuel Mikoviny (engineer) and Wolfgang von Kempelen (polyhistor and co-founder of comparative linguistics). Ányos Jedlik physicist and engineer invented the first electric motor(1828), the dynamo, the self-excitation, the impulse generator, and the cascade connection. Important name in 19th century physics is Joseph Petzval,one of the founders of modern optics. The invention of the transformer (by Ottó Bláthy Miksa Déri and Károly Zipernowsky), the AC electricity meter and the electricity distribution systems with parallel-connected power sources decided the future of electrification in the War of Currents, which resulted in the global triumph of alternate current systems over the former direct current systems. Roland von Eötvös discovered the weak equivalence principle (one of the cornerstones in Einsteinian relativity). Rado von Kövesligethy discovered laws of black body radiation before Planck and Wien. Hungary is famous for its excellent mathematics education which has trained numerous outstanding scientists. Famous Hungarian mathematicians include father Farkas Bolyai and son János Bolyai, designer of modern geometry (non-Euclidean geometry) 1820–1823. János Bolyai is together with John von Neumann considered as the greatest Hungarian mathematician ever. The most prestigious Hungarian scientific award is named in honor of János Bolyai. Paul Erdős, famed for publishing in over forty languages and whose Erdős numbers are still tracked; and John von Neumann, Quantum Theory, Game theory a pioneer of digital computing and the key mathematician in the Manhattan Project. Many Hungarian scientists, including Zoltán Bay, Victor Szebehely (gave a practical solution to the three-body problem, Newton solved the two-body problem), Mária Telkes, Imre Izsak, Erdős, von Neumann, Leó Szilárd, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller emigrated to the US. The other cause of scientist emigration was the Treaty of Trianon, by which Hungary, diminished by the treaty, became unable to support large-scale, costly scientific research; therefore some Hungarian scientists made valuable contributions in the United States. Thirteen Hungarian or Hungarian-born scientists received the Nobel Prize: von Lenárd, Bárány, Zsigmondy, von Szent-Györgyi, de Hevesy, von Békésy, Wigner, Gábor, Polányi, Oláh, Harsányi, and Herskó. All emigrated, mostly because of persecution of communist and/or fascist regimes. Names in psychology are János Selye founder of Stress-theory and Csikszentmihalyi founder of Flow- theory. Tamás Roska is co-inventor of CNN (Cellular neural network) Some highly actual internationally well-known figures of today include: mathematician László Lovász, physicist Albert-László Barabási, physicist Ferenc Krausz, biochemist Árpád Pusztai and the highly controversial former NASA-physicist Ferenc Miskolczi, who denies the green-house effect. According to Science Watch: In Hadron research Hungary has most citations per paper in the world. In 2011 neuroscientists György Buzsáki, Tamás Freund and Péter Somogyi were awarded one million Euro with The Brain Prize ("Danish Nobel Prize")" for ".. brain circuits involved in memory..." After the fall of the communist dictatorship (1989), a new scientific prize, Bolyai János alkotói díj, has been established (1997), politically unbiased and of the highest international standard.

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