Budapest Scientific: A Guidebook
István Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai
Abstract
This guidebook introduces the reader—the scientific tourist and others—to the visible memorabilia of science and scientists in Budapest—statues, busts, plaques, buildings, and other artefacts. According to the Hungarian–American Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi, this metropolis at the crossroads of Europe has a special atmosphere of respect for science. It has been the venue of numerous scientific achievements and the cradle, literally, of many individuals who in Hungary, and even more beyond its borders became world-renowned contributors to science and culture. Six of the eight chapters of ... More
This guidebook introduces the reader—the scientific tourist and others—to the visible memorabilia of science and scientists in Budapest—statues, busts, plaques, buildings, and other artefacts. According to the Hungarian–American Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi, this metropolis at the crossroads of Europe has a special atmosphere of respect for science. It has been the venue of numerous scientific achievements and the cradle, literally, of many individuals who in Hungary, and even more beyond its borders became world-renowned contributors to science and culture. Six of the eight chapters of the book cover the Hungarian Nobel laureates, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the university, the medical school, agricultural sciences, and technology and engineering. One chapter is about selected gimnáziums from which seven Nobel laureates (Szent-Györgyi, de Hevesy, Wigner, Gabor, Harsanyi, Olah, and Kertész) and the five “Martians of Science” (von Kármán, Szilard, Wigner, von Neumann, and Teller) had graduated. The concluding chapter is devoted to scientist martyrs of the Holocaust. A special feature in surveying Hungarian science is the contributions of scientists that left their homeland before their careers blossomed and made their seminal discoveries elsewhere, especially in Great Britain and the United States. The book covers the memorabilia referring to both émigré scientists and those that remained in Hungary.
Keywords:
scientific tourist,
memorabilia of science,
hungarian Nobel laureates,
émigré scientists,
martians of Science,
gimnáziums
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198719076 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2015 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719076.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
István Hargittai, author
Professor Emeritus, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Magdolna Hargittai, author
Research Professor, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
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