We inform you with deep sorrow that our distinguished colleague, Professor Sándor Csörgő passed away on February 14, 2008. To treasure his memory we create this web page on which we shall publish condolences sent in email to condcsorgo@server.math.u-szeged.hu and also reminiscences about Sandor, the scientist and the man.

On March 15, 2008, Professor Sándor Csörgõ posthumously received the prestigious Széchenyi Prize. The Széchenyi Prize is the highest honour awarded to researchers by the Government of the Republic of Hungary; it is usually presented by the President, the Prime Minister and Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament on the 15th of March national holiday.

Sándor Csörgő, 1947-2008

Sándor Csörgő, professor of the University of Szeged and preeminent mathematician in the fields of probability and statistics, passed away on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at the age of sixty one. His untimely death is a tragic loss to the university and the Hungarian mathematical community.

Sándor Csörgő was born in Egerfarmos, Hungary on July 16, 1947. He graduated from high school in the city of Eger and went to study mathematics at the University of Szeged where he earned his university diploma. His scientific career is closely linked to the Bolyai Insitute. He became an assistant in 1970, teaching assistant in 1972, assistant professor in 1975, and associate professor in 1978. He was appointed a full professor at the Bolyai Institute in 1987. He completed his doctorate under the scientific guidance of professor Károly Tandori in 1972 with professor Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy also on his  examination committee. He obtained his candidate degree in 1975 at the Kijev State University under the supervision of A. V. Skorohod. He earned the Doctor of Science degree in 1984. Professor Csörgő's research interests covered every major area of probability theory and mathematical statistics. He opened several new fields of research; his work in the theory of limit theorems is his most lasting mathematical legacy. He is the author of one monograph and 163 research articles published in international scientific journals. He was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001, and a full member in 2007.

There are more than 2,500 citations to works written by Professor Csörgő. He was one of the three most cited Hungarian mathematicians who  appeared on the IsIHighlyCited list of the Science Citation Index. This is a very high achievement, especially that only six Hungarian scientists have this honour in all. He was an invited speaker at sixty five international conferences and he gave more than eighty invited seminar talks at various univerisities and research institutes in Hungary and abroad. In the period 1990-1998 he was a professor at  the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, U.S.A.).

Professor Csörgő was the founder of the stochastics graduate school at Szeged; he was the first to pursue research in probability theory and mathematical statistics at the Bolyai Institute. His school, due to his ground-breaking work, soon won international recognition. As the head of the Stochastics Department of the Bolyai Institute, he designed, developed and maintained  all undergraduate and graduate probability and statistics courses at the University of Szeged. Being a dedicated and effective teacher, he had the ability to attract and influence talented students whom he launched early on a successful scientific career. Six of his studens won prizes at the Hungarian National Scientific Students’ Associations Conferences.  Four university doctorates, one candidate degree and four PhDs were earned under his supervision.

Professor Csörgő was a prominent and  active member of the mathematical community. He was a member of the editorial boards of several international journals and he regularly served as a referee of manuscripts and doctoral dissertations. He sat on a number of university and national mathematical education committees. He has been the vice president of the Section of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 2005.

For his distinguished scientific and educational achievements, he was awarded the Rényi Kató Memorial Prize in 1970, the Grünwald Géza Memorial Prize in 1974, the Erdős Pál Mathematical Award in 1986, the Award of the Academy in 1999, the Szele Tibor Memorial Prize in 2004, the Master Professor Award of the  Hungarian National Conference of Scientific Students’ Associations in 2005, and the Szent-Györgyi Albert Prize in 2005. In 2007 he was awarded the Grand Prize of the Foundation for Szeged.

His untimely death ended a bright scientific career. He was full of plans until the very end, he continued working with his graduate students even when he became gravely ill. Sadly, his monograph on the St. Petersburg paradox will remain unfinished.  His lively personality, good humour and his unfailing sense of justice will be sorely missed at the Bolyai Institute. Although his outstanding mathematical legacy will remain with us, his death is a great loss to the Institute and the whole mathematical community.

A funeral service was held according to the Catholic rite on Friday, February 29, 2008 at 1 p.m. in the Újszeged cemetery (Szőregi út 85, Szeged).

Bolyai Institute, University of Szeged

Farewell Speech by Professor László Kérchy, Head of the Bolyai Institute 
 

    On behalf of the Bolyai Institute I wish to say farewell to Professor Sándor Csörgő, Chair of the Department of Stochastics, a distinguished researcher and teacher of probability and mathematical statistics.

    He was born in the small village of Egerfarmos in Heves County, where he received part of his elementary education in a one-room school. During his high school years in the nearby city of Eger, Sándor was interested in every subject equally as he was not committed to mathematics yet; that was also the time when he acquired his excellent English knowledge. Inspired by his fifteen years older brother Miklós, an economist turned mathematician who emigrated to Canada in 1956, Sándor entered the József Attila University in Szeged to become a mathematics and physics teacher. Later, in his sophomore year, he changed to mathematics major completely. He was awed by the trio of professors: László Rédei, László Kalmár and Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy, known later as the second triumvirate of the institute; and he was profoundly influenced by Professor Károly Tandori who eventually became his mentor.

    His first papers, written during his student years, were inspired by the   stochastics problems posed by his brother Miklós. Thus he committed himself to the mathematical theory of random phenomena, also known as stochastics. This turned out to be an excellent choice, since no one had been doing research in this important subject in the Bolyai Instutite before. In 1972 he earned his university doctorate and, surmounting all the difficulties placed in his way by administrators of the soviet empire, he left for Kiev to pursue his postgraduate studies. In Kiev, his supervisor was the renowned Anatoli Vladimirovich Skorohod, a distinguished probabilist whom Sándor held in high esteem not only for his scientific qualities but also for his personal integrity and his moral stand against the soviet sytem. Sándor also proved his moral character when he withstood the pressure put on him by the authorities who tried to enlist him as a secret agent using his trip to England as a pretext. His harrassment stopped only after one of the influential professors of the Institute had interceded on his behalf.

    After obtaining his Candidate degree in 1975, he returned to the Bolyai Institute, which he considered a calm and safe haven in a troubled world and where he felt inspired and also obliged by the excellence of his predecessors. He worked with high intensity and with great enthusiasm producing a steady flow of influential papers that won him international recognition.  He rose steadily in the university ranks and was appointed a full professor in 1987. 

    In the 1980s, he was caught up in the exodus of researchers from Eastern Europe. After brief visits to other universities, in 1989 he accepted a full professorship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he and his family spent the next almost ten years. In Ann Arbor, he was a successful professor surrounded by graduate students; his wife, Zsuzsi, found a highly regarded job, and his children, Zsuzsa and Bálint, also adapted well to the new environment. In spite of these successes, he decided to return to Hungary beacuse he considered Szeged and the Bolyai Institute his true home, and because he did not want his children to  be severed from their Hungarian roots.

    After his return to Szeged, he started the reform of the stochastics/probability curriculum with great impetus while maintining his research activities at the same high level as before. For his distinguished scientific achivements, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member in 2001 and a full member in 2007.  His scientific excellence and  charisma attracted many students who, under his supervision, won all existing Hungarian prizes and fellowships. In the end, it saddened him much that he was unable to continue fostering his youngest graduate students who still needed his support, and that he was unable to finish his book on the resolution of the St. Petersburg paradox, one of the oldest problems in the theory of probability. He still wanted to think about one or two of his favourite problems to attempt once more to find their soultions as old age was drawing near. Sadly, this chance was not granted to him. However, what he has  completed  is a great achievement of both Hungarian and international stochastic researches. His reputation and recognition are also reflected in the the large number of citations his works received and the numerous scientific papers submitted to the journal Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum in honour of his sixtieth birthday.  The fact that today the Bolyai Institute is continued to be held in high regard as a centre of the mathematical sciences is also due to his work and achievements.

    His death is not only a loss of a great probabilist but also of a Renaissance man with a wide intellectual horizon and the most colourful personality of our institute. His presence will be sorely missed; it is very painful to accept that we will never see him again walking down our corridors with brisk strides and, despite a heavy workload awaiting him, stopping to have a friendly chat.  

    Dear Professor Csörgő, dear Sándor, farewell. May you rest in peace.  

    (Translated to English by Ferenc Fodor)

Dear Laszlo,

this a very sad news. I have known Sandor since 1984 and always admired him as an exceptional scholar and human being. His moral standards were extraordinarily high and he never hesitated to speak up when he believed the cause was just, no matter how unpopular. He was also a great friend of Poland and many Polish mathematicians. T. Ledwina, T. Inglot, A. Weron, J, Koronacki, Z. Rychlik and D. Szynal expressed their  grief and  a sense of  great loss on learning about his death.

He will be remembered  and  missed.

Jan Mielniczuk

Professor Laszlo Kerchy
Department of Mathematics
University of Szeged

Dear Professor Kerchy:

I am very saddened by the news that Sandor passed away. I will send a card and a note to his wife Zsuzsi. I viewed Sandor as a dear friend.  He was a constant source of inspiration I am very proud to have published a paper with him several years ago and I am also very proud to have a paper in the special volume of your journal Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum (Szeged) dedicated to him on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Sandor strongly supported my professional development even though it is clear that I do not come close to being in his league. The entire probability/statistics community has lost a good friend and a distinguished leader. Over the past year I showed many of my colleagues the article by Sandor describing his experiences in the the U.S.S.R. when he went there in the 1970's to work with Professor Skorokhod. All who read it were deeply impressed.

Sincerely,

Andrew Rosalsky
Department of Statistics
University of Florida
Gainesville, Florida 32611
U.S.A.

Dear Professor Kerchy,

Colleagues and friends of the Department of Mathematics, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland, have learned with deepest sorrow of the death of Professor Sandor Csorgo -  a great scientist and a wonderful man, who has served your institution faithfully for many years.

We wish to extend to you our sincere sympathy knowing the sorrow you must feel at the loss of such an eminent scientist.

Please convey also our sincere condolences to his family,

 Yours sincerely,
 Zdzislaw Rychlik
 Eligiusz Zlotkiewicz

Dear Laszlo,

It was with considerable sadness that I learned, last weekend, of Sandor's death.  I greatly admire his research, and I treasure the experiences we shared in the early 1980s, when he visited Australia for a period of about six weeks.  (I think it was in mid 1980 or 1981.)  On one occasion my wife and I drove him to Sydney for a weekend, staying overnight with my father, south of Sydney.  We went to the zoo on Saturday, and I remember that it was a lovely, pleasantly cool sunny day.  To reach the zoo from the south side of Sydney harbour we caught a ferry, and Sandor enjoyed the ride.

From the ferry wharf we took a bus to the zoo's gates.  There, one of the first attractions was the reptile house.  I'm far from being an enthusiast for snakes, but I wasn't aware until that point that Sandor was even more concerned about them than I.  We could not persuade him to enter that part of the zoo.  My father enjoyed Sandor's company, and years later he would ask how Sandor was getting on.

Sandor was the consummate professional, and carefully collected all the reprints and preprints he acquired during his visit to Australia.  When it came time to leave he decided that the papers were too valuable to entrust to airline baggage handlers, and that they would have to travel in the cabin with him.  So the papers were carefully stacked in a rather large carry-on bag, which he kept with him during check-in procedures at Canberra airport.  However, when he walked towards the departure gate, one Qantas's ground staff noticed the sharp angle at which he was leaning, laden down by the very heavy weight on one of his shoulders.  She approached him, and tried lift the bag herself; she couldn't.  So she persuaded him to check the bag.  It arrived safely back in Hungary.

I want to extend my warm regards to Sandor's family, who have the most difficult burden to bear at this time.  His colleagues, who like me admire his professional achievements, also greatly value his warmth, sincerity and integrity. Therefore we can particularly appreciate the difficult time that his family is enduring.  We can all draw strength from the fondness and happy memories that all those who knew him, around the world, are reliving at this time.

Kind regards

Peter Hall

I wrote three papers with Sandor during his time at the University of Michigan. This was at an early stage in my career and I learned a great deal from him about the process of research. Sandor was a kind and generous man and I am very grateful to him for his support. He was also a great friend colleague and I have many fond memories of working with him at Michigan. Some small recollections:

- Sandor wrote his papers in plain TeX. He was very meticulous in his preparation of articles and spent much time in making sure that the appearance of the paper was exactly right.

- Sandor never drove a car in Michigan. He liked American football and the New Yorker magazine. He didn't like barbers - he had his hair cut very short once a year every spring. You could tell the time of year by the length of his hair.

- Sandor was very good at talking. It was always interesting conversation but it was a mistake to go see him if you were in a hurry.

Julian Faraway
University of Bath
England

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Department of Probability and Statistics at the Insitute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, we express our sincere condolences for the untimely death of Professor Sandor Csorgo. We know him as a famous mathematician and remember his excellent series of lectures delivered during a Summer School on Probability and Statistics held in Varna in 1987. We understand that his death is great loss to your institution and to the whole mathematical community.

Yours sincerely,

Nickolay Yanev, Chair
Elisaveta Pancheva
Ljuben Mutafchiev

Colleagues from the Department of Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics of the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Ukraine were very sorry to hear of the irretrievable loss of the great mathematician Sandor Csorgo. He remains in our memory as a very nice person as he has always been, since our acquaintance in Kyiv, where he had been studied in Kyiv University under supervision of A.Skorohod. Please accept our most heartfelt and sincerest condolences.

Yuliya Mishura, the Head of the Department of Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics,
the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv,
Ukraine

Dear Professor Kerchy,

We are distressed by the sad news from Szeged  -  Sandor Csorgo's untime death. He did his research in stochastics during 1972-75 in Kyiv under Professor Skorokhod's   scientific advision and we had many opportunities to contact him at that remote time. Later on we met him in many conferences on Probability Theory, listened to his talks in this domain, contacted to him in many aspects of human life. In 2005  he sent us his bright and talanted written reminiscence about his entering the postgraduate position at Kyiv University to be published in the booklet devoted to the jubilee of  Anatolii Skorokhod  ("Meeting a Free Man: a Snapshot of A.V. Skorokhod").

 We shall remember him and think of him cordially and with sorrow that we shall not have a chance to contact him any more...

                                   Anatolii Skorokhod, Valerii Buldygin,
                                   Andrey Dorogovtsev, Dmytro Gusak,
                                   Mykola Portenko, Halyna Syta

Kedves Kollégák!

Mély fájdalommal és megrendüléssel értesültünk Csörgő Professzor haláláról. A család tragédiája mellett pótolhatatlan veszteség érte a magyar matematika, a felsőoktatás ügyét. Vigaszul csak az szolgálhat mindannyiunk számára, hogy eredményei révén örökre beírta a nevét az egyetemes tudomány világába, egyetemi oktatóként pedig rengeteg ember szívébe. Kérjük, hogy a család, a Szegedi Tudományegyetem, a Bolyai Intézet, minden kedves szegedi kolléga fogadja az ELTE Numerikus Analízis Tanszékének őszinte együttérzését. Csörgő Professzor halálát személyes veszteségként éljük meg, emlékét megőrizzük.