The Academia Europaea (AE) has awarded the prestigious Erasmus Medal to László Lovász, Professor Emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Research Professor at the HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, and former President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The honor recognizes his groundbreaking contributions to discrete mathematics, computer science, and European scientific culture.
Lovász will receive the medal at the AE annual conference in Barcelona on 16 October 2025, where he will also deliver the Erasmus Lecture, titled The Beauty of Mathematics. The Erasmus Medal is one of the highest distinctions awarded by Academia Europaea for scientific achievements.
In its citation, AE praised Lovász as one of the most outstanding mathematicians of our time, highlighting his ability to uncover surprising connections between fields such as computer science, discrete and continuous mathematics, probability theory, number theory, cryptography, and statistical physics. His influential results include the weak perfect graph conjecture, the Kneser conjecture, the Lovász local lemma, the Lenstra–Lenstra–Lovász lattice reduction algorithm, and the theory of graph limits, which have reshaped modern mathematics and theoretical computer science.
Lovász’s career spans decades of teaching and research at leading institutions worldwide. After earning his degrees at ELTE, he taught at József Attila University in Szeged, later leading ELTE’s Department of Computer Science. Internationally, he held positions at Princeton University, Yale University, the University of Bonn, and Microsoft Research, before returning to Hungary in 2006. From 2014 to 2020, he served as President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and played a key role in establishing the Budapest Knowledge Hub of Academia Europaea.
His accolades include the Wolf Prize (1999), Knuth Prize (1999), Gödel Prize (2001), Kyoto Prize (2010), and most notably the Abel Prize in 2021, often considered the Nobel equivalent in mathematics. In Hungary, he has been honored with the Corvin Chain, the Bolyai Prize, and the Széchenyi Grand Prize. Over his career, Lovász has authored 12 books and more than 300 scientific papers.
With the Erasmus Medal, Academia Europaea adds another chapter to the remarkable legacy of László Lovász, recognizing his role as both a pioneering mathematician and an ambassador of European scientific excellence.
Source: Eötvös Loránd University
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