László Fuchs


László Fuchs is a Hungarian-American mathematician, the Evelyn and John G. Phillips Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Mathematics at Tulane University. He is known for his research and textbooks in group theory and abstract algebra.

Biography

Fuchs was born on June 24, 1924 in Budapest, into an academic family: his father was a linguist and a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1946 and a doctorate in 1947 from Eötvös Loránd University. After teaching high school mathematics for two years, and then holding positions at Eötvös Loránd, the Mathematical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Miami, he joined the Tulane faculty in 1968. At Tulane, Fuchs chaired the mathematics department from 1977 to 1979. He retired in 2004.
Fuchs has nearly 100 academic descendants, many of them through his student at Eötvös Loránd, George Grätzer.
He was treasurer of the János Bolyai Mathematical Society from 1949 until 1963, and secretary-general of the society from 1963 to 1966.

Books

Fuchs won the Kossuth Prize in 1953. He is a foreign member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Two conferences were dedicated to him on the occasion of his 70th birthday, and another on his 75th.
At Tulane University, Fuchs held the W. R. Irby Professorship from 1979 to 1992, and the Evelyn and John G. Phillips Distinguished Professorship from then until his retirement.
In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.