László Lovász

László Lovász (Hungarian pronunciation: [%CB%88la%CB%90slo%CB%90 ˈlovaːs]; born March 9, 1948) is a Hungarian mathematician, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the Wolf Prize and the Knuth Prize in 1999, and the Kyoto Prize in 2010. He is the current president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Lovász was born on March 9, 1948 in the city of Budapest. His father was a surgeon.

Lovász received his Candidate of Sciences (C.Sc.) degree in 1970 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His advisor was Tibor Gallai.

Until 1975, Lovász worked at Eötvös Loránd University, between 1975–1982, he led the Department of Geometry at the University of Szeged. In 1982, he returned to the Eötvös University, where he created the Department of Computer Science. The former and current scientists of the department include György Elekes, András Frank, József Beck, Éva Tardos, András Hajnal, Lajos Pósa, Miklós Simonovits, Tamás Szőnyi.

Lovász was a professor at Yale University during the 1990s and was a collaborative member of the Microsoft Research Center until 2006. He returned to Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, where he was the director of the Mathematical Institute (2006–2011).

He served as president of the International Mathematical Union between January 1, 2007 and December 31, 2010.

In 2014 he was elected the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA).

Notable awards:

• Kyoto Prize (2010)
• Hungary's Széchenyi Grand Prize (2008)
• Bolyai Prize (2007)
• John von Neumann Theory Prize (2006)
• Gödel Prize (2001)
• Knuth Prize (1999)
• Wolf Prize (1999)
• Fulkerson Prize (1982, 2012)
• Best Information Theory Paper Award (IEEE) (1981)
• Pólya Prize (SIAM) (1979)