100 Notable alumni of Eotvos Lorand University

Nandor Fodor was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin.

Ferenc Karinthy was a Hungarian novelist, playwright, journalist, editor and translator, as well as a water polo champion. He authored more than a dozen novels. His father was the writer and journalist Frigyes Karinthy. His mother, the psychiatrist Aranka Böhm, was killed in 1944 in Auschwitz.

Emőke Bagdy is a Hungarian clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, professor emerita at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary (KRE), and former director of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. Her research, books, papers and talks focus on psychotherapy, health psychology and foundational problems of clinical psychology and clinical supervision.

Géza Sándor Bereményi is a Hungarian writer, play- and screenwriter, lyricist, film- and theatre director. He was awarded Best European Director for his film Eldorado at the 2nd European Film Awards.

Bea Palya is a Hungarian folk and world music singer and songwriter, sometimes appearing in films as an actress or singer.

Paul Lendvai is a Hungarian-born Austrian author, journalist and political commentator who writes on topics such as Eastern Europe, communism, and antisemitism.

Eugen Kvaternik was a Croatian nationalist politician and one of the founders of the Party of Rights, alongside Ante Starčević. Kvaternik was the leader of the 1871 Rakovica Revolt which was an attempt to create an independent Croatian state, at the time when it was part of Austria-Hungary. In order to get foreign support for his cause Kvaternik visited the...

Sándor Wekerle was a Hungarian politician who served three times as prime minister. He was the first non-noble to hold the office in Hungary.

György Baló was a Hungarian broadcast journalist and academic lecturer, who served as anchorman for various political talk shows of the Hungarian public television channel Magyar Televízió (MTV) since the 1970s.

János Lackfi is an Attila József Prize recipient Hungarian poet, writer, literary translator, teacher, Nyugat-expert, photographer.

Georg von Békésy was a Hungarian-American biophysicist.

György Konrád (2 April 1933 – 13 September 2019) was a Hungarian novelist, pundit, essayist and sociologist known as an advocate of individual freedom.

Josif Pančić was a Serbian botanist, physician, professor and academic. Born in the First French Empire, in present-day Croatia, he earned his medical degree in Hungary before moving to Serbia. He extensively documented the flora of Serbia, and is credited with having classified many species of plants which were unknown to the botanical community at that time. Pančić is credited...

Miron Cristea was a Romanian cleric and politician.

András Schiffer is a Hungarian lawyer and former politician, who served as co-president of the Politics Can Be Different and leader of its parliamentary group. Schiffer announced his retirement from politics on 31 May 2016.

Gábor Demszky is a Hungarian politician, lawyer and sociologist by qualification. Demszky was the Mayor of Budapest from 1990 to 2010. He was a founding member of the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) between 1988 and 2010.

Gedeon Richter was a Hungarian pharmacist, founder of Gedeon Richter plc and a pioneer of the modern Hungarian pharmaceutical industry.

Ervin Lázár was a Hungarian author. Although he wrote a novel (A fehér tigris (The White Tiger), 1971) and a number of short stories, he is best known for his tales and stories for children.

Krisztina Morvai is a Hungarian jurist and nationalist politician. She was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), having been elected on the list of the political party Jobbik – Movement for a Better Hungary – in the 2009 European Parliament elections. She was re-elected in 2014. Morvai is not a member of Jobbik, and later supported Fidesz.

László Bárdossy de Bárdos was a Hungarian diplomat and politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from April 1941 to March 1942. He was one of the chief architects of Hungary's involvement in World War II.

Michael Balint was a Hungarian psychoanalyst who spent most of his adult life in England. He was a proponent of the object relations school.

Lőrinc Szabó de Gáborján was a Hungarian poet and literary translator.

Ignác Goldziher (22 June 1850 – 13 November 1921), often credited as Ignaz Goldziher, was a Hungarian scholar of Islam. Alongside Joseph Schacht and G.H.A. Juynboll, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern academic hadith studies.

József Tihamér Antall Jr. was a Hungarian teacher, librarian, historian, and statesman who served as the first democratically elected prime minister of Hungary, holding office from May 1990 until his death in December 1993. He was also the leader of the Hungarian Democratic Forum from 1989.

Antal Szerb was a noted Hungarian scholar and writer. He is generally considered to be one of the most important Hungarian writers of the 20th century.

Imre Madách de Sztregova et Kelecsény was a Hungarian aristocrat, writer, poet, lawyer and politician. His major work is The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragédiája, 1861). It is a dramatic poem approximately 4000 lines long, which elaborates on ideas comparable to Goethe's Faust and Milton's Paradise Lost. The author was encouraged and advised by János Arany, one of the...

Ferenc Móra was a Hungarian novelist, journalist, and museologist.

Béla Balázs, born Herbert Béla Bauer, was a Hungarian film critic, aesthetician, writer and poet of Jewish heritage. He was a proponent of formalist film theory.

Milan Hodža was a Slovak politician and journalist, serving from 1935 to 1938 as the prime minister of Czechoslovakia. As a proponent of regional integration, he was known for his attempts to establish a democratic federation of Central European states.

Péter Boross is a Hungarian retired politician and former member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from December 1993 to July 1994. He assumed the position upon the death of his predecessor, József Antall, and held the office until his right-wing coalition was defeated in election by the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), which...

János Pilinszky was one of the greatest Hungarian poets of the 20th century.

Ferenc Mádl was a Hungarian legal scholar, professor, and politician, who served as President of Hungary from 2000 until 2005. Prior to that he had been minister without portfolio from 1990 to 1993 then Minister of Education from 1993 to 1994 in the conservative cabinets of József Antall and Péter Boross.

Albert-László Barabási is a Romanian-born Hungarian-American physicist, renowned for his pioneering discoveries in network science and network medicine.

Gyula Juhász was a Hungarian poet, who was awarded the Baumgarten Prize.

István György Örkény was a Hungarian writer whose plays and novels often featured grotesque situations. He was a recipient of the Kossuth Prize in 1973.

László Lovász is a Hungarian mathematician and professor emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the 2021 Abel Prize jointly with Avi Wigderson. He was the president of the International Mathematical Union from 2007 to 2010 and the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 2014 to 2020.

Béla Hamvas was a Hungarian writer, philosopher, and social critic. He was the first thinker to introduce the Traditionalist School of René Guénon to Hungary.

Dóra Dúró is a Hungarian politician of the Our Homeland Movement, formerly spokesperson of the far-right nationalist political party Jobbik.

Count István Imre Lajos Pál Tisza de Borosjenő et Szeged; (22 April 1861 – 31 October 1918) was a politician who served as prime minister of Hungary from 1903 to 1905 and from 1913 until 1917. He was also a political scientist, international lawyer, macroeconomist, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and champion duelist. The outbreak of World War...

Károly Grósz [ˈkaːroj ˈɡroːs] was a Hungarian communist politician, who served as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party from 1988 to 1989.

Count István Bethlen de Bethlen was a Hungarian aristocrat and statesman and served as prime minister from 1921 to 1931.

Tamás Deutsch is a Hungarian politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Hungary. He is a member of Fidesz, part of the Patriots for Europe group. He was a member of the Hungarian Parliament between 1990 and 2009 and Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports between 1999 and 2002.

Sándor Pintér is a Hungarian politician and former top police officer. He served as Minister of the Interior from 1998 to 2002 and since 2010, in Viktor Orbán's cabinets.

Tamás Somló was a Hungarian musician, singer-songwriter and artist. He is mostly known for having been a member of Hungarian rock bands Omega and Locomotiv GT and for composing several of their successful songs. Besides being a singer, his main instruments were bass guitar, clarinet, and the saxophone.

László Rajk was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizing the State Protection Authority (ÁVH)), but he eventually fell victim to Mátyás Rákosi's show trials.

Kálmán Mikszáth de Kiscsoltó was a widely reputed Hungarian novelist, journalist, and politician. His work remains in print in Hungarian and still appears from time to time in other languages.

Ernő Gerő was a Hungarian Communist leader in the period after World War II and briefly the most powerful man in Hungary in 1956, as leader of the ruling Hungarian Working People's Party.

Iuliu Maniu was a Romanian lawyer and politician. He was a leader of the National Party of Transylvania and Banat before and after World War I, playing an important role in the Union of Transylvania with Romania.

Max Simon Nordau was a Jewish Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic. He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice-president of several Zionist congresses.

Gábor Vona is a Hungarian historian, teacher, and former nationalist politician who led the political party Jobbik from 2006 until 2018. He was the party's candidate for the position of prime minister in the 2010, 2014, and 2018 parliamentary elections. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 2010 to 2018 and led the Jobbik parliamentary group until 2016.

Traian Vuia or Trajan Vuia was a Romanian inventor and aviation pioneer who designed, built, and tested the first tractor monoplane. He was the first to demonstrate that a flying machine could rise into the air by running on wheels on an ordinary road. He is credited with a powered hop of 11 m (36 ft) made on 18 March...

Count Mihály Ádám György Miklós Károlyi de Nagykároly was a Hungarian politician who served as a leader of the short-lived and unrecognized First Hungarian Republic from 1918 to 1919. He served as prime minister between 1 and 16 November 1918 and as president between 16 November 1918 and 21 March 1919.

Michael Polanyi FRS was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism is a false account of knowing.

Lazar Kostić was a Serbian poet, prose writer, lawyer, aesthetician, journalist, publicist, and politician. He is considered to be one of the greatest minds of Serbian literature. Kostić wrote around 150 lyrics, 20 epic poems, three dramas, one monograph, several essays, short stories, and a number of articles. Kostić promoted the study of English literature and together with Jovan Andrejević-Joles...

Mihály Vörösmarty was a Hungarian poet and dramatist who lived and worked in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Árpád Göncz was a Hungarian writer, translator, lawyer and liberal politician who served as President of Hungary from 2 May 1990 to 4 August 2000. Göncz played a role in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, for which he was imprisoned for six years. After his release, he worked as a translator of English-language literary works.

Péter Esterházy was a Hungarian writer. He was one of the best known Hungarian and Central European writers of his era. He was called a "leading figure of 20th century Hungarian literature", and his books were considered to be significant contributions to post-war literature.

Ágnes Heller was a Hungarian philosopher and lecturer. She was a core member of the Budapest School philosophical forum in the 1960s and later taught political theory for 25 years at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She lived, wrote and lectured in Budapest.

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as a professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts. The art critic Peter Schjeldahl called him "relentlessly experimental" because of his pioneering work in painting, drawing, photography, collage, sculpture, film, theater, and...

Andrea Klára Osvárt is a Hungarian actress, film producer, and former fashion model.

Mária Telkes was a Hungarian-American biophysicist, engineer, and inventor who worked on solar energy technologies.

József Szájer is a retired Hungarian politician and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) of the Fidesz party. He resigned as MEP on 29 November 2020 (effective at the end of December) after having been caught by Belgian police after a gay sex orgy on the night of 27 November, in violation of local COVID-19 regulations.

László Kövér is a Hungarian politician who is the current speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary. Under his capacity as speaker, he was also twice acting president of Hungary in 2012 after the resignation of Pál Schmitt, and again in 2024 after the resignation of Katalin Novák.

Count Pál János Ede Teleki de Szék was a Hungarian politician who served as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1920 to 1921 and from 1939 to 1941. He was also an expert in geography, a university professor, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and chief scout of the Hungarian Scout Association. He descended from an...

Mihály Babits was a Hungarian poet, writer, essayist, and translator. His poems are well known for their intense religious themes. His novels such as “The Children of Death” (1927) explore psychological problems.

Endre Ady was a turn-of-the-century Hungarian poet and journalist. Regarded by many as the greatest Hungarian poet of the 20th century, he was noted for his steadfast belief in social progress and development and for his poetry's exploration of fundamental questions of the modern European experience: love, temporality, faith, individuality, and patriotism.

Viktor Mihály Orbán is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been the 56th prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has also led the Fidesz political party since 2003, and previously from 1993 to 2000. He was re-elected as prime minister in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he...

Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. Erdős pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, graph theory, number theory, mathematical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory. Much of his work centered on discrete mathematics, cracking many previously unsolved problems in the field....

Victor Vasarely was a Hungarian-French artist, who is widely accepted as a "grandfather" and leader of the Op art movement.

János Áder is a Hungarian politician and lawyer who served as President of Hungary from 2012 to 2022. He is a long-time politician of the right-wing Fidesz. As a representative of his party, he took part in the Hungarian Round Table Talks during the end of communism in Hungary in 1989. He was a member of the National Assembly of...

Karl Paul Polanyi was an Austro-Hungarian economic historian, economic sociologist, and politician, best known for his book The Great Transformation, which questions the conceptual validity of self-regulating markets.

Albert Imre Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt was a Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with first isolating vitamin C and discovering many of the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle and the molecular basis of muscle contraction.

Ágnes Kunhalmi is a Hungarian socialist politician. She is a Member of the National Assembly since the 2014 election, and a Member of the executive board of the Hungarian Socialist Party, since 2018. She was the Female co-chair of the Hungarian Socialist Party, between 19 September 2020 and 19 October 2024.

László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian writer, novelist and screenwriter. Krasznahorkai is known for his difficult and demanding novels, often labeled postmodern, which explore dystopian and melancholic themes. Several of his works, including his novels Satantango (1985) and The Melancholy of Resistance (1989), have been adapted into feature films by the director Béla Tarr.

Szilárd István Németh is a Hungarian teacher and politician. He served as the mayor of Csepel (21st district of Budapest) from 2010 to 2014. Besides that he represented Csepel (Budapest Constituency XXXI) in the National Assembly of Hungary between 2010 and 2014. He was also a member of parliament from the Budapest Regional List of Fidesz between 2004 and 2006,...

Katalin Cseh is a Canadian-born Hungarian physician and politician. She was elected as a Momentum Movement (part of the Renew Europe party group) Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in the 2019 parliamentary election and served until 2024. In 2024, she became an MP in the Hungarian Parliament.

Klára Dobrev is a Bulgarian-Hungarian Third Way politician who serves as Member of the European Parliament and leader of the Democratic Coalition. She has previously also served as Vice-President of the European Parliament and Shadow Prime Minister.

Zsolt Semjén is a Hungarian politician. He was a member of Parliament between 1994 and 1998 and was reelected in 2002. Since 2003, he has been the chairman of the Christian Democratic People's Party. Minister without portfolio and Deputy Prime Minister in the second, third, fourth and fifth cabinet of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Semjén became the leader of the...

Balázs Orbán is a Hungarian lawyer, university professor, and politician, who has been serving as Political Director of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (with whom he has no relation) since 2021 and member of the National Assembly since 2022. From 2018 to 2022, Orbán was Deputy Minister, and Parliamentary and Strategic State Secretary to the Prime Minister's Office.

Gyula Maár was a Hungarian film director and screenwriter. He directed 25 films between 1966 and 2007. His 1975 film, Mrs. Dery Where Are You? won the award for Best Actress (Mari Törőcsik) at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. In 1986, his film Első kétszáz évem was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1993, his film Whoops...

András Kepes is a Hungarian author, television host, documentary filmmaker and academic. He is Professor of film and media and Chair of the Council of Arts of the Budapest Metropolitan University (METU).

Eszter Ónodi is a Hungarian film and theater actress.

Pál Mácsai is a Hungarian actor. He has appeared in more than forty films since 1983.

Géza Röhrig is a Hungarian actor and poet. He is best known for his role in the 2015 film Son of Saul, which won the Grand Prix at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Gergely Szilveszter Karácsony is a Hungarian politician, sociologist, political scientist, activist and current Mayor of Budapest. He previously served as member of the National Assembly (MP) from 2010 to 2014 and Mayor of Zugló from 2014 to 2019.

Áron Szilágyi is a Hungarian right-handed sabre fencer. A five-time Olympian, Szilágyi is a three-time individual Olympic champion, 2021 team Olympic bronze medalist, and 2024 team Olympic silver medalist.

József Torgyán was a Hungarian lawyer and politician, chairman of the Independent Smallholders' Party (1991−2002), Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (1998−2001) in the Government of Viktor Orbán.

Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director. His 44-year association with the orchestra is one of the longest enjoyed by any conductor with any American orchestra. Ormandy made numerous recordings with the orchestra, and as guest conductor with European orchestras, and achieved three gold records...

Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, music pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music education.

László Nagy was a Hungarian poet and translator. He started as a populist poet and in his early youth was a believer in socialist ideology. His oeuvre comprises more than 400 poems and many volumes of translations. He was also a prose writer and graphic artist.

Petru Groza was a Romanian politician, best known as the first Prime Minister of the Communist Party-dominated government under Soviet occupation during the early stages of the Communist regime in Romania, and later as the President of the Presidium of the Great National Assembly (nominal head of state of Romania) from 1952 until his death in 1958.

Sándor Márai was a Hungarian writer, poet, and journalist.

György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, literary critic, and aesthetician. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Soviet Marxist ideological orthodoxy. He developed the theory of reification, and contributed to Marxist theory with developments of Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. He was also a philosopher of Leninism....

Karl Mannheim was a Hungarian sociologist and a key figure in classical sociology as well as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim is best known for his book Ideology and Utopia (1929/1936), in which he distinguishes between partial and total ideologies, the latter representing comprehensive worldviews distinctive to particular social groups, and also between ideologies that...

George Charles de Hevesy was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals. He also co-discovered the element hafnium.

Péter Frankl is a mathematician, street performer, columnist and educator, active in Japan. Frankl studied mathematics at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and submitted his PhD thesis while still an undergraduate. He holds a PhD degree from the University Paris Diderot as well. He has lived in Japan since 1988, where he is a well-known personality and often appears in...

Pál Maléter was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution who served as minister of defence in the third government of Imre Nagy.

George Pólya was a Hungarian-American mathematician. He was a professor of mathematics from 1914 to 1940 at ETH Zürich and from 1940 to 1953 at Stanford University. He made fundamental contributions to combinatorics, number theory, numerical analysis and probability theory. He is also noted for his work in heuristics and mathematics education. He has been described as one of The...

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician and scientist of German descent who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures and was described as the "saviour of mothers". Postpartum infection, also known as puerperal fever or childbed fever, consists of any bacterial infection of the reproductive tract following birth and in the 19th century was common and often fatal. Semmelweis...