Magyar Hírek, 1983 (36. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1983-09-17 / 18-19. szám
“YES!” said the T-shirt on the pretty teen-ager coming out of Margitsziget, one of central Budapest’s parks, the other day. And yes is what she and many young Hungarians have been saying to the English language in recent years. There are fifteen million speakers of Hungarian in the world, of whom some ten million live in Hungary. So Hungarians have always had to learn another language as part of their education or for reasons of travelling or trade. For a long time this second language was German. But in recent years English has begun to take up the place here which it has held in Western Europe since the early sixties. Why the change-over? For the young, American and British youth culture is clamourous, its music fascinating. (Incidentally, the old Beatles songs are still well-known here.) There has been a noticeable increase in the numbers of young visitors from Western and Northern Europe and English is the most convenient language for most young Europeans when they want to talk to people of their own age. There is also the great prestige English enjoys as an international language these days and again Hungarian publishing houses are quick to translate both fiction and non-fiction from English. For many people, English is a professional necessity — to take one example, computer programs are generally written in English here. The old-fashioned rule, translation and literary method has become, well, old-fashioned. The student, adult and teen-ager alike, nowfinds himself working with spoken English right from the beginning, speaking English rather than being told how to speak English. Far more use is made of tapes, more emphasis is laid on listening rather than reading, speaking rather than writing; what the student wants to do with the language he is learning is seen as more important than “knowing” about the language. “It’s not that the best are better than they used to be, but that the average standard has increased enormously,” commented one young Englishwoman who is here again under a teacher exchange programme. How and when does a Hungarian learner of English get a chance to practice it? Hungarian Radio puts out two serials a year in English, one aimed at younger (9 to 13 year old) listeners; T. I. T., a national organization which runs evening classes in practically every subject, has set up English Clubs in most towns and these meet weekly; of the hundreds of intensive course centres, the majority give their own students the chance to come together and practice their English outside the classroom. More and more privately run language schools are starting up, especially in the capital, more and more companies are providing in-service English courses for their own staff. The engineer getting ready for a posting to Nigeria, the disco group recording another album for the Japanese market, the teen-ager with the eyecatching T-shirt are simply different aspects of this boom. PETER DOHERTY WHY ENGLISH? PÁL ERDŐS AT SEVENTY As a scholar, Pál Erdős made his mark in number theory, in combinatorics, in set theory, in the theory of probability, and in several branches of mathematical analysis. His life work is of a defining character in several fields of mathematics; he has marked out the directions of progress with his achievements, and the manner in which he put questions for a long time. He has published more than nine hundred papers. The international recognition he has received is no less than his achievement. Besides the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of the United States, and the Academy of Sciences of Holland have also elected him as their member, and several universities conferred honorary degrees on him. Be that as it may, I cannot formally end this standard review of data: I cannot unambiguously state where he is working now. He never took up a permanent job, which made the saying that he is not a university professor, but a professor of the universe, a teacher of generations and scientific paragon of mathematicians a household word in Hungary and far beyond the borders of the country. He enrolled in the mathematicsphysics department of Budapest University in September 1930. His first field of interest was the theory of integers. He already discovered many elementary connections at that time, and his first world-renowned achievement was based on these. His mathematics professors were Lipót Fejér and József Suták, about this time, while he attended the lectures of Gusztáv Rados and József Kürschak at the Budapest Technical University. Soon a group of young mathematicians came into being around him. The group included Pál Túrán, the recently deceased member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, György Szekeres, a member of the Australian Academy, Endre Vazsonyi, Tibor Gallai, László Alpár, Géza Grünwald, who died in the war, Dezső Lázár, and many others. They met regularly at the Anonymus statue in the Town Park; and went walking on Sundays. The darking thunder clouds in the world weighed heavily upon them, and so did the serious social and economic problems, but their main subject of interest and binding link was still mathematics. He published several papers during his years at the university. The leading mathematicians of number theory already took notice of him. He graduated in 1934, took his doctors degree under Lipót Fejér, and left for England on a three-year scholarship, he stood up well to the change of environment. Mathematics filled his life. He visited his native land regularly during vacations, and maintained connections with his old friends also by correspondence. He was open, and direct in his human relationships. He found more and more friends and working partners. He left Budapest just before the outbreak of the Second World War, almost at the last minute, and was Professor Pál Erdős already in the United States, when war broke out. Immediately after the end of the war he began to try to pick up the links with his old friends. He still lived very modestly, when he started to organize collections in friendly circles at the universities in order to send gift-parcels and money to his colleagues and friends at home. I saw one of his yellowed telegrams from 1945 or 46 with the list of the Hungarian mathematicians. Lipót Fejér, Frigyes Riesz, György Alexits and some ten more names with small numerals beside them, the money assistance sent to them, by cable. He declared himself to be Hungarian also during' his absence abroad and remained a Hungarian citizen. He came home first in 1948, then in the summer of 1956. The atmosphere of the McCarthy era weighed heavily on him too. He received an invitation in 1954 to the international conference of mathematicians in Amsterdam, but they did not want to give him a return visa. He declared that he was not going to tolerate such limitations, and left the United States. Only a decade later did he get back the right to again freely visit American universities, as a result of loud protestations by friends and followers. I first met him in the summer of 1956, at Szeged. I was 25 years old at the time, final year post graduate student. I was introduced to him. He enquired about the subject of my dissertation. It was too abstract, and did not interest him. He asked if I had any interesting problem in set theory. He was interested in that. This is how the rest of the day passed: first we climbed up to the tower of the Votive Church (I learned later that he usually did the same with every higher place, towers, look-outs, mountain tops), and solved part of my problem already as we climbed the stairs. We continued working at night, even during dinnor. By the time he left the next dar , the fundamentals of a joint paper, which was published after much correspondence in 1958, were already laid. Today he is working the same way, alternating work with chess, go, table tennis, apparently playing, yet with unbelievable concentration, sorr e - 1 iines with a number of people simultaneously, jumping from subject to subject. He keeps all of his personal belongings in two small suitcases and roams the world, for he gets invitations to just about everywhere, and he goes just about everywhere. In the strict sence of the term he has no private life. After he returned to Hungary, he took his mother with him on his journeys abroad, taught her English, and talked over everything with her. Since she died in 1971 at the age of 91, his family consists of the fraternity of mathematicians. There are a number of homes around the world, where his return is awaited. Yet he still belongs to us, Hungarian mathematicians in the first place. He has been corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences sinee 1956, and a full member since 1962. It was Alfréd Rényi, the founder and first director of our institute, and one of the closes friends of Erdős, who organized a permanent position for him at the Research Institute for Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Science as a result he regularly spends a longer time here each year providing invaluable help to practically every department of the Institute. The Hungarian schools of eombinatiorics and set theory developed in the wake of his work; he is also one of the founders of the Hungarian school of number theory. Not less than five of his disciples have become members of the Academy. He takes particular interest in very young talents. More than one child prodigee has became a research mathematician under his guidance. He also established a prize for mathematics, to be awarded annually by the department of mathematical and physical sciences of the Academy to a young mathematician. Erdős has never proclaimed a pompous philosophy of life; that is not his style. His world is that of reason, of logic, and of a sober love of people, in which he would like to judge everything with a great degree of objectivity. He knows not everybody can lead the life he leads. He shares our everyday troubles with surprising knowledge, and sure judgement, and looks after the cause of Hungarian science with caring concern. We hope he will do this for a long time to come, and in good health. ANDRÁS HAJNAL 53
