Nationality Hungarian Role Mathematician Fields Mathematics Notable students Laszlo Babai | Name Vera Sos Education Eotvos Lorand University Awards Academy Prize | |
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Born September 11, 1930 (age 93)
Budapest, Hungary ( 1930-09-11 ) Institutions Eotvos Lorand University Doctoral students Laszlo Babai
Andras Recski
Laszlo Szekely Similar People Pal Turan, Laszlo Lovasz, Laszlo Babai, Gabor Halasz, Charles Rackoff | ||
Vera T. Sòs, Doctor Philisophiae Honoris Causa, Hebrew University
Vera T. Sos (born September 11, 1930) is a Hungarian mathematician, specializing in number theory and combinatorics. She was a student and close collaborator of both Paul Erdos and Alfred Renyi. She also collaborated frequently with her husband Pal Turan, the analyst, number theorist, and combinatorist (the letter T in her name stands for Turan). Until 1987, she worked at the Department of Analysis at the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest. Since then, she has been employed by the Alfred Renyi Institute of Mathematics. She was elected a corresponding member (1985), member (1990) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1997, Sos was awarded the Szechenyi Prize.
Contents
- Vera T Ss Doctor Philisophiae Honoris Causa Hebrew University
- Life and career
- Awards
- Selected publications
- References
One of her results is the Kovari–Sos–Turan theorem concerning the maximum possible number of edges in a bipartite graph that does not contain certain complete subgraphs. Another is the following so-called friendship theorem proved with Paul Erdos and Alfred Renyi: if, in a finite graph, any two vertices have exactly one common neighbor, then some vertex is joined to all others. In number theory, Sos proved the three distance theorem, conjectured by Hugo Steinhaus.
Life and career
Vera Sos is the daughter of a school teacher. As an adolescent, Sos attended the Abonyi Street Jewish highschool in Budapest and graduated in 1948. She was later introduced to Alfred Renyi and Paul Erdos, who she later collaborated with, by her teacher Tibor Gallai. (Together she and Erdos have thirty joint papers.) Sos considered Gallai to be the person who discovered her gift for mathematics. Sos was also one of three girls out of all the girls in Gallai's class that became a mathematician. Sos later attended Eotvos Lorand University. There, she studied as a mathematics and physics major and graduated in 1952. Although she was still a student, Sos taught at Eotvos University in 1950. At the age of twenty, Sos attended a Mathematical Congress in Budapest, Hungary and attended a summer internship. Sos met her husband and collaborator Paul Turan in college. They married in 1952. The two had two children in 1953 and 1960, Gyorgy and Thomas Turan. Turan died in September 1976.
In 1965, Sos began the weekly Hajnal-Sos seminar at the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy for Science with Andras Hajnal. The seminar is considered to be a "forum for new results in combinatorics." This weekly seminar continues to this day.
Throughout her years working in mathematics, Sos has been honored with many awards as a result of her work. One of the many awards includes the Szechenyi Prize which she received in 1997. The Szechenyi Prize is an award given to those who have greatly contributed to the academic life of Hungary.