To mark the 200th anniversary of its founding, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) organizes a number of high-quality scientific and educational events throughout the year. As part of the series of celebrations, each month a different scientific section is given the opportunity to present its historical roots, the most important achievements of its members, the challenges they face and directions in their field of science.
In January 2026, the Section of Mathematics will take center stage: those interested can look forward to a rich program of events, including public lectures, film screenings, and a month-long exhibition showcasing the diversity and social impact of mathematics. Several researchers from Rényi Institute will give lectures as part of the January program series of HAS's Section of Mathematics. The January program series kicks off with prestigious events.
On January 7, two inaugural lectures will be given: eight of the Academy's new members elected last May will give inaugural lectures in January (3 regular members, 3 corresponding members, 2 external members), including Gábor Tardos from Rényi Institute, who will give an inaugural lecture entitled "Forbidden substructures in ordered graphs and 0–1 matrices," and Balázs Szegedy, who will give an inaugural lecture entitled "Asymptotic behavior of large structures." On January 14, András Némethi will give an inaugural lecture entitled "How does lattice cohomology appear in different branches of mathematics?".
On January 9, community and educational aspects of mathematics will be presented: Péter Pál Pálfy will recount the history of the Bolyai János Mathematical Society, Péter Juhász will talk about the past and significance of Hungarian mathematical talent development, while Dávid Kunszenti-Kovács will present the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) along with other prestigious international competitions.
The second half of the month also has some outstanding events in store for those interested. On January 19, you can learn about the ERC mentoring program at a dedicated panel discussion. Rényi Institute will be represented by András Stipsicz and Miklós Abért.
On January 21, the focus will be on the most important figures and achievements in Hungarian mathematics over the past two centuries: Péter Pál Pálfy will talk about the two Bolyais, Zoltán Füredi will analyze the international success of Hungarian mathematics in a lecture entitled 150 Years at the Forefront of the World, while Miklós Simonovits and András Stipsicz will present some significant results of theorems of both Hungarian discrete mathematics schools and from Rényi Institute, respectively.
At the event organized by the Section's Mathematical Scientific Committee on January 22, major questions of number theory and analysis will be discussed: János Pintz will talk about the famous unsolved problems of prime number theory, Péter Pál Pach will give a lecture on the path from the Erdős–Turán conjecture to the polynomial method, while Gergely Harcos will present a modern mathematical approach to an ancient problem using automorphic forms. The series of events will be concluded by lectures from András Biró, Endre Szemerédi, and Imre Z. Ruzsa, with the former discussing Diophantine approximation and the latter two recalling some of Pál Erdős's favorite math problems.
The afternoon discussion with Abel Prize-winning mathematicians Endre Szemerédi and László Lovász on January 28 is expected to draw a large audience.
The Section of Mathematics' series of festive events will conclude on January 29 with a lecture by Rényi's director András Stipsicz entitled The Development of the Concept of Three-Dimensional Space from Bolyai to Perelman, which will trace the historical arc of geometric thinking.