mathematician university professor
Rényi was born in Budapest to Artur Rényi and Barbara Alexander. His father was a mechanical engineer while his mother was the daughter of a philosopher and literary critic, Bernát Alexander. He married Katalin Schulhof (who used Kató Rényi as her married name), herself a mathematician, in 1946.
Their daughter Zsuzsanna was born in 1948.
He was prevented from enrolling in university in 1939 due to the anti-Jewish laws then in force, but enrolled at the University of Budapest in 1940 and finished his studies in 1944. At this point he was drafted to forced labour service, escaped, and completed his Doctor of Philosophy in 1947 at the University of Szeged, under the advisement of Frigyes Riesz.
After a brief assistant professorship at Budapest, he was appointed Professor Extraordinary at the University of Debrecen in 1949. In 1950, he founded the Mathematics Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, now bearing his name, and directed it until his early death. He also headed the Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics of the Eötvös Loránd University, from 1952.
He was elected a corresponding member (1949), full member (1956) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Rényi, who was addicted to coffee, is the source of the quote: "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems", which is generally ascribed to Erdőson
lieutenant has been suggested that this sentence was originally formulated in German, where it can be interpreted as a wordplay on the double meaning of the word Satz (theorem or coffee residue), but it is more likely that the original formulation was in Hungarian. He is also famous for having said, "If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy.
If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy."
The Alfréd Rényi Prize, awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Science, was established in his honor.
Quotations:
Rényi, who was addicted to coffee, is the source of the quote: "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems", which is generally ascribed to Erdőson lieutenant has been suggested that this sentence was originally formulated in German, where it can be interpreted as a wordplay on the double meaning of the word Satz (theorem or coffee residue), but it is more likely that the original formulation was in Hungarian.
He is also famous for having said, "If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy.".
Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
