George Szekeres
Hungarian-Australian mathematician (1911–2005)
George Szekeres (Hungarian: [ˈsɛkɛrɛʃ]; 29 May 1911 – 28 August 2005), born Szekeres György, was a Hungarian–Australian mathematician. After migrating to Australia after World War II, he worked first for the University of Adelaide, and then the University of New South Wales. He is known for his co-authoring a paper with fellow Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős known as the "Happy Ending problem", and married mathematician Esther Klein.
Early years and education
Szekeres György was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 29 May 1911.
He received his degree in chemistry at the Royal Joseph University (later Technical University of Budapest). He graduated with a degree in chemical engineering in 1933, having studied only one mathematical course, in calculus.
The so-called "Happy Ending problem" is an example of how mathematics pervaded Szekeres's life. During 1933, George and several other students met frequently, often at the Anonymous statue in City Park, to discuss mathematics. At one of these meetings, Esther Klein proposed the problem: "Given five points in the plane in general position, prove that four of them form a convex quadrilateral." After allowing George, Paul Erdős, and the other students to scratch their heads for some time, Esther explained her proof. Subsequently, George and Paul wrote a paper (1935) that generalises this result; it is regarded as one of the foundational works in the field of combinatorial geometry.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Szekeres” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.