Mihály Kovács

His head teacher at the university was József Öveges, whose legacy he later took care of, and whose pedagogical principles he developed in teaching physics influenced his work as well. He was ordained a priest on June 15, 1941, before receiving his teaching certificate.

He began his teaching career in Szeged in 1942, and a year later his superiors transferred him to the Budapest Piarist High School on Mikszáth Square. Here, in the 1958-59 school year, he started the first cybernetics class with twenty fourth-grade students. Each topic was worked on by one student and presented to the others. The topics were varied, for example: automation problems, counting devices, analog computers, mechanical computers, logic gates, the operation of digital computers, programming, machine languages, but even the basics of game theory were discussed. Many of his students chose computer science as a career.

Over the years, the cybernetics club produced the logic game machines that brought national and even international fame to the mathematics and physics education at the Budapest Piarist High School. Among them, the Didaktomat and the Mikromat were patented; the Teaching Materials Factory manufactured them, and 3,000 of the Mikromats were sold. Several articles on the subject were published in the Secondary Mathematics and Physics Journals, Life and Science, Physics Teaching and Radio Technology.

In the 1970s, he also organized programming courses. In 1974, he managed to buy a desktop calculator, which was a novelty at the time. From then on, computer education took up a lot of his time. In 1981, he purchased the first full-fledged microcomputer for the school from abroad. The Hungarian secondary school computer technology developments that began in 1983 were partly based on his experimental results. In 1984, computer technology education in the Piarist high school had reached such a level that every high school student studied computer technology.

His awards: Mikola Award (1983); Tarján Award (1987); Order of Merit of the Star with a Golden Wreath of the Republic of Hungary (1991); Teacher Rátz Lifetime Achievement Award (2003).