CL & CL - Computational Linguistics and Computer Languages 12. (1978)

TAMÁS FREY (1927 - 1978) The world of science as well as our journal has suffered a distressing loss: Tamás Frey died on the 9th April 1978. Bot his life and his activités were closely connected with Hungarian history and science. Ha was bom 1927 in Pécs, and completed his grammar school studies there. In March 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo, he was liberated in Mauthausen. He matriculated at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Technical University of Budapest in 1946, and in 1948 continued his studies at the Weak Current Section of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. He took his degree in 1950 and began his scientific career at the Mathematical Department. His intense mathematical interest lead him to the study of numerical and graphic methods, he defended his candidate’s dissertation with the title ”On some local theorems of the con­structive function theory” in 1956. Since 1960 he worked as assistant professor, and from the early sixties he was active in the basic issues of computer science. His principal field of research covered automata theory, the theory of approximation, numerical algorithms and the theory of optimal processes, but he was involved in all important trends of international scientific life, so that he achieved results in mathematical statistics information theory, pattern recog­nition methods, ergodic theory and completion theory. From 1962 he was caretaker director, from 1964 permanent director of the Computing Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (one of the predecessors of the Computer and Automation Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences). His ability to obtain a compre­hensive view, his acquaintance with his field of activity and his universal knowledge enabled him to develop this young institute to become a centre of applied mathematical research, promoting thereby the efficient application of the results of computer science. In 1970 he was awarded the title of Doctor of Sciences for his dissertation ’’Automata, algorithms, their optimization and approximation”, a synthesis of the outstanding achievements of his work. He did not become divorced from educational work, and he actively participated to the very end in the teaching of mathematics and in the preparation and implementing of the edu­cational reform. From 1968 he was Professor and Head of the Mathematical Department of the Faculty of Electrical Engineerig of the Technical University of Budapest. He was a member of several Hungarian and international scientific societies where he promoted the progress of science with the some generous activity as in his principal posts. Generations of mathematicians and engineers into full stature under his guidance, having been given careful and attentive assis­tance in their first attempts in personal interviews with him. His conception and his scientific imagination opened new vistas in the immense areas of sciences which more unexplored until then, and he surveyed them together with us.

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