Pál Turán

Pál Turán (ˈpaːl ˈturaːn; 18 August 1910 – 26 September 1976) also known as Paul Turán, was a Hungarian mathematician who worked primarily in extremal combinatorics. In 1940, because of his Jewish origins, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a labour camp in Transylvania, later being transferred several times to other camps. While imprisoned, Turán came up with some of his best theories, which he was able to publish after the war. Turán had a long collaboration with fellow Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, lasting 46 years and resulting in 28 joint papers. Turán was born into a Jewish family in Budapest on 18 August 1910. Pál's outstanding mathematical abilities showed early, already in secondary school he was the best student. At the same period of time, Turán and Pál Erdős were famous answerers in the journal KöMaL. On 1 September 1930, at a mathematical seminar at the University of Budapest, Turan met Erdős. They would collaborate for 46 years and produce 28 scientific papers together. Turán received a teaching degree at the University of Budapest in 1933. In the same year he published two major scientific papers in the journals of the American and London Mathematical Societies. He got the PhD degree under Lipót Fejér in 1935 at Eötvös Loránd University. As a Jew, he fell victim to numerus clausus, and could not get a stable job for several years. He made a living as a tutor, preparing applicants and students for exams. It was not until 1938 that he got a job at a rabbinical training school in Budapest as a teacher's assistant, by which time he had already had 16 major scientific publications and an international reputation as one of Hungary's leading mathematicians. He married Edit (Klein) Kóbor in 1939; they had one son, Róbert. In September 1940 Turán was interned in labour service. As he recalled later, his five years in labour camps eventually saved his life: they saved him from ending up in a concentration camp, where 550,000 of the 770,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during World War II.