Let’s start with our four Nobel Prize-winning scientists:
In 1963, Jenő Wigner (1902-1995) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the dispersion theory of nuclear reactions. From 1920 to 1921 he was a student in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Universities at the Royal University of Technology, and then a degree in chemical engineering from the Technical College of Berlin-Charlottenburg.
In 1971, Dénes Gábor (1900-1979) was awarded the Physical Nobel Prize for the discovery of the holographic process. He studied in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Royal University of Technology for three years, then in 1924 he graduated from the Technical College of Berlin-Charlettenburg with a degree in electrical engineering.
The 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to György Oláh (1927-2017) for his achievements in the research of carbocations. He studied at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Royal Hungarian József Nádor University of Technology and Economics between 1945-1949. After graduating with a degree in chemical engineering, he worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Technical University until 1953.
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared equally between Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz. Ferenc Krausz graduated from BME in 1985 as an electrical engineer. He began his research work at BME Institute of Physics, and spent three years researching in the university’s laser laboratory. In 2005, at the suggestion of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the BME.
Within the walls of our university, many scientists and engineers have studied, taught and researched, and their world famous results have been achieved in all departments of the institution, may those be natural, technical, economic and social related topics.
Among our world-famous scientists and discoveries are:
Ödön Lechner (1845-1914): architect, pioneer of Hungarian-style Art Nouveau
Károly Zipernowsky (1853-1942): mechanical and electrical engineer, one of the patenters of the transformer
Donát Bánki (1859-1922): mechanical engineer, developer of the carburetor and the Bánki turbine
Kálmán Kandó (1869-1931): railway engineer, developer of the phase changer and pioneer of railway electrification
Feller Heller (1877-1955): economist, theoretical administration, money theory, foreign trade theory research
Tódor Kármán (1881-1963): physicist, mathematician, aeronautical engineer, pioneer of supersonic aviation, rocket technology and hypersonic spacecraft
Leo Szilárd (1898-1964): a physicist, he recognized the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction
Ede Teller (1908-2004): physicist, the “father of the hydrogen bomb”
ifj. Ernő Rubik (1944-): architect, inventor of the Rubik’s Cube (originally called the Magic Cube).
