Why So Many Inventors

Hungary has about ten million people, yet the list of Hungarian-born inventors, mathematicians and scientists who changed the modern world is long: a toy that sold hundreds of millions, a pen found in every drawer, the architecture of the modern computer, vitamin C. This opening chapter asks what that claim means, how far it is true, and how to read stories of "Hungarian inventions" without being carried away by them. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

The Claim

It is often said that Hungary has produced an unusual number of inventors and scientists for its size, and that many of them left the country and made their names elsewhere (check how this is measured and who makes the claim). The evidence usually offered is a list of names:

What Counts as an Invention?

The word covers several different kinds of achievement, and mixing them confuses the story:

• An object or device. A thing that did not exist before, such as the cube or the ballpoint pen. It can be patented.
• A method or process. A way of doing something, such as a manufacturing process or a solving method.
• A discovery. Finding something that already existed, such as a vitamin or a law of nature. This is not an invention in the patent sense, though it can lead to one.
• A theory or design. An abstract idea, such as a computer architecture, which is not a physical thing at all.

Another distinction matters: the first to have an idea, the first to build it, and the first to make it succeed are often three different people. Many "inventions" have several claimants (check examples, and see Chapter 5).

The "Martians" Legend

A well-known story says that a group of Hungarian-born scientists in the United States, among them von Neumann, Leo Szilárd, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner and Theodore von Kármán, were so brilliant that some colleagues joked they must be Martians who had settled in Budapest, speaking a language no one understood (check the origin of the joke and who is credited with it). It is a good story, and a reminder that a legend can be more memorable than the facts. Chapter 8 looks at who these scientists were and why they left, without taking a side on the debates their work raised.

Why So Many? Some Suggested Explanations

Several explanations are offered. None is proven, and they should be treated as suggestions (check each):

• Education. A strong tradition of mathematics and science teaching in Budapest's secondary schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (check the schools named and the claim).
• A cultured middle class. A city with a large, educated, often Jewish professional class that valued learning (check, and treat the topic with care).
• Political upheaval. War, revolution and discrimination pushed many to emigrate, so that Hungarian talent appears abroad (see Chapter 8).
• Selection by the telling. A list of famous names is easy to build and hard to compare with other countries, which may have similar lists (check).

Sources and How to Check Them

• Patents. Patent records show who applied for what, and when. They are the best evidence for devices (check the databases).
• Biographies and museum collections. Rubik, Bíró and the Nobel laureates have biographies, and Hungarian museums hold material (check which, and see Chapter 9).
• Prize records. Nobel Prize records are public and exact.
• Popular stories. Web lists of "Hungarian inventions" are often exaggerated; treat them as leads to check, not as facts.

Exercises