András Békéssy

After graduating from university, he was an assistant professor at the Department of Theoretical Physics, Faculty of Natural Sciences (TTK) of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) until 1951; he was a lecturer in the subject of theoretical physics.

Between 1951 and 1954, he was a postdoctoral fellow of academician Lajos Jánossy at the Central Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (KFKI), while between 1952 and 1955, he taught numerical methods at the Faculties of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry of the Faculty of Engineering of the Hungarian University of Technology.

Between 1954 and 1971, he was a research associate and then a senior research associate at the Institute of Mathematical Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and from 1962 he was the head of the Numerical and Graphical Methods Department. In 1965, he defended his candidate's dissertation on the topic of Mathematical Science.

He continued to teach at ELTE. The first event in the teaching of computer science here was the computer science seminar held in the 1957/58 academic year, at which the Wilkes-Wheelre-Gill book on programming the EDSAC was discussed. (Among the participants of the seminar we mention János Szelezsán and Gyula Lőcs.) From 1961 he led the course on programming the M-3 and Ural-1 machines (as an elective subject). Under his supervision, János Szelezsán wrote the first Hungarian thesis on programming.

Between 1971 and 1976, he was the head of the Computer Science Department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Computer Science and Automation Research Institute (SZTAKI), and also an official of the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

During his scientific work, he dealt with mathematical statistics, numerical methods, especially the Monte Carlo method, and in the field of computer science, the technical mathematical and physical issues of electronic computers.

He was a member of the Bolyai János Mathematical Society (BJMT) and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

His awards: Géza Grünwald Prize (BJMT, 1963), Academic Prize (1984), Ottó Benedikt Prize (SZTAKI, 1985).