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Centres of Excellence in Hungary

Thematic focus and development of the Centre

Thematic focus and development of the Centre

Since its establishment in 1950, the Institute has become a significant international centre of research in pure and applied mathematics. The staff works on independent research projects in theoretical mathematics, on problems raised by other sciences as informatics, physics, economics, medicine, and questions raised by social, industrial or agricultural applications. The researchers belong to nine departments according to the mathematical disciplines covered by their work: Algebra, Algebraic Logic, Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Geometry, Information Theory, Number Theory, Probability Theory and Statistics, and Set Theory and Topology.

Eight members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences are in the Institute (The total number of "active" members in all sciences including humanities and law is 200).

Volume of scientific output and activities in the past years

In the past years the average number of researchers working in the Institute was 55, they published 120-130 scientific papers (about 110 of them in international journals) and they authored 3-4 books and 2-3 chapters of books in total per year. They delivered more than 300 scientific talks per year, about 130 per year on international events. In average, 35-40 members of the Institute took part in the education at different universities, teaching approximately 140 hours per week. The Institute had about 50 PhD students in the past ten years. In average the Institute has 80 foreign guests annually, delivering talks at the seminars and collaborating with fellows of the Institute, about 10 of them stays for longer periods. The researchers in the Institute get approximately 75-80 invitations to give talks at international conferences. Most researchers go at least twice abroad for shorter visits, and usually 15 members of the Institute work abroad as guest professor for one-two semesters every year.

Our researchers publish 35% of the referred papers published by Hungarian mathematicians and Hungarian mathematicians published 2.05% of the papers in mathematics in the whole world, while Hungary has only 0.16% of the world's population.

International attraction

The strongest area in our Institute is discrete mathematics (combinatorics, graph theory, theoretical computer science). Visitors are often surprised how 10-12 people can form such a strong school, how they can publish so many important papers. The answer is that there is a fluctuation, many of our researchers have moved to the US. The Wolf-prize winner Pál Erdős, the most prolific mathematician of the century used our Institute as a base for his constant travels.

Fourteen researchers of ours gave nineteen invited lectures at the International Congresses of Mathematicians and the European Congresses of Mathematicians as invited speakers. It was an important acknowledgement to the Hungarian mathematical traditions that the second European Congress of Mathematicians (after the first one in Paris) was organized in Budapest. . The Chairman of the Organizing Committee was G. Katona, and several other members of the Institute took part in the organization, for example A. Balog and D. Szász were Editors of the Proceedings of the Congress.

In July 1999 the Institute, Eötvös University and the Bolyai Society organized the 'Paul Erdős and his Mathematics' conference with 450 foreign participants.

Our colleagues are members of editorial boards of 32 international journals published abroad; 5 published in Hungary.

Our library offers about 45,000 books and 420 periodicals to the whole Hungarian mathematical community. The library is open to everybody free of charge though the members of the Institute naturally have special rights. Five years ago we implemented a special complex library software and by now the catalogue of the important part of the library is in it's database searchable from all over the world via Internet. The Library has the two most important mathematical referring journals in print, on CD-ROM and on-line as well, it accesses the Academy's central citation data base, subscribes to many (mathematical) electronic journals and electronically connected to the other major Hungarian mathematical libraries allowing inter-library exchange.

Contact information

Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Director: Gyula O. H. Katona
Address: H-1053 Budapest, Reáltanoda u. 13-15.
Postal address: H-1364 Budapest, P.O. Box 127
Telephone: (36-1) 483 8300
Fax: (36-1) 483 8333
e-mail: math@renyi.hu
URL: http://www.renyi.hu

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