Géza Fodor (6 May 1927 in

Szeged Szeged ( , ; see also #Etymology, other alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat ...

– 28 September 1977 in Szeged) was a Hungarian

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, working in

set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies Set (mathematics), sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory – as a branch of mathema ...

. He received a PhD from the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

in 1954, advised by

László Kalmár László Kalmár ( ; 27 March 1905, Edde – 2 August 1976, Mátraháza) was a Hungarian mathematician and Professor at the University of Szeged. Kalmár is considered the founder of mathematical logic and theoretical computer science in Hun ...

and

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...

. His dissertation was titled " Investigation of the structure of set mappings". He proved

Fodor's lemma In mathematics, particularly in set theory, Fodor's lemma states the following: If \kappa is a regular, uncountable cardinal, S is a stationary subset of \kappa, and f:S\rightarrow\kappa is regressive (that is, f(\alpha)<\alpha for any ...

stationary set In mathematics, specifically set theory and model theory, a stationary set is a set that is not too small in the sense that it intersects all club sets and is analogous to a set of non-zero measure in measure theory. There are at least three closel ...

s, one of the most important, and most used results in

. He was a professor at the Bolyai Institute of Mathematics at the

Szeged University The University of Szeged () is a public research university in Szeged, Hungary. Established as the Jesuit Academy of Kolozsvár in present-day Cluj-Napoca in 1581, the institution was re-established as a university in 1872 by Emperor Franz Jose ...

. He was vice-president, then president of the

. He was elected a corresponding member of the

References

1927 births 1977 deaths Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Set theorists 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians People from Szeged {{Europe-mathematician-stub