Peculiar Hungarians

"We are Martians who have come to Earth to change everything—and we are afraid we will not be so well received. So we try to keep it a secret, try to appear as Americans … but that we could not do, because of our accent. So we settled in a country nobody ever has heard about and now we are claiming to be Hungarians."

[sronti]

Dr. George Berci, Whose Innovations Changed Surgery, Dies at 103

He conceived many of the techniques and tools that have revolutionized minimally invasive operations and procedures.

Nem nagyon volt még olyan, hogy magyar vonatkozású hírt előbb látok New York Times-ban, mint magyar híroldalakon, de gondolom elvitte ezt is az árvízkészültség.

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Gábor Szabó (1936 – 1982) was a Hungarian-American guitarist whose style incorporated jazz, pop, rock, and Hungarian music. (wikipedia)

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Katalin Karikó (1965-), biochemist, Senior Vice President at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals

“Legions of scientists, including many mRNA specialists, have helped develop the Moderna and BioNTech vaccines. But it was Kariko — with the help of University of Pennsylvania immunologist Drew Weissman — who discovered a method in 2005 to prevent the inflammatory response in the body to synthetic mRNA. […]

The workaholic Kariko, who rises at 5 a.m. every day and still has a lab in her basement, prefers to hop on the rowing machine in her living room and go off on rapid-fire, impassioned tangents in her still heavily-accented English about nucleosides, antigens, short and long RNA strands, proteins, cells and spikes.”

https://nypost.com/2020/12/05/this-scientists-decades-of-mrna-research-led-to-covid-vaccines/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3

(Dupla marslako bonusz: Ebben a francia cikkben az angol akcentusat is fontosnak tartjak megemliteni, ketszer)

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Quite peculiar!

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Istvan Banyai (1949-2022) - illustrator and animator

“I feel like I’m an outsider. I’m really an oddball guy who managed to, like a jackal, eat whatever the pigs leave behind.”

"And because of his thick accent, I always came away form those smoky, beery café afternoons and evenings feeling as if I’d had a rendezvous with some old pal in Budapest." (source)

“Istvan’s pictures were masterful and precise but also trippy and sexy, a great hybrid,” the author Kurt Andersen, a former editor in chief of New York magazine, wrote in an email. “They looked more like animation cels — distinctly European animation, filtered through the late 1960s — than sketchy cartoons.” (The New York Times)

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Bela Julesz, 1928-2003, visual neuroscientist and experimental psychologist 

[1] Béla Julesz was a Hungarian-born American visual neuroscientist and experimental psychologist in the fields of visual and auditory perception. Julesz was the originator of random dot stereograms which led to the creation of autostereograms. He also was the first to study texture discrimination by constraining second-order statistics.

[2] "I particularly liked Julesz's one-line epigraph for behaviourist psychology: "Psychology without consciousness is like math without infinity" (p. 146)- possible, but not very interesting. Take this book in dialogue sized bites. Endeavour to hear it in a rich Hungarian accent. It is the next best thing to dinner with Bela."

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Gabriella Fekete (1944-) - Hungarian born sculptor based in Duisburg, Germany

"- Why did you leave Hungary?

- Well, I wanted to become someone. It's not that easy to become someone in Hungary."

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Katalin Karikó (1965-), biochemist, Senior Vice President at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals

“Legions of scientists, including many mRNA specialists, have helped develop the Moderna and BioNTech vaccines. But it was Kariko — with the help of University of Pennsylvania immunologist Drew Weissman — who discovered a method in 2005 to prevent the inflammatory response in the body to synthetic mRNA. [...]

The workaholic Kariko, who rises at 5 a.m. every day and still has a lab in her basement, prefers to hop on the rowing machine in her living room and go off on rapid-fire, impassioned tangents in her still heavily-accented English about nucleosides, antigens, short and long RNA strands, proteins, cells and spikes.”

https://nypost.com/2020/12/05/this-scientists-decades-of-mrna-research-led-to-covid-vaccines/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3

(Dupla marslako bonusz: Ebben a francia cikkben az angol akcentusat is fontosnak tartjak megemliteni, ketszer)

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BBC Radio 4 - Last Word, Russi Taylor, Beji Caid Essebsi, Jane Hubert, Iván Erőd

Matthew Bannister on a President, a voice artist, an anthropologist and a composer.

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John Lukacs, iconoclastic historian, dead at 95

NEW YORK (AP) — John Lukacs, the Hungarian-born historian and iconoclast who brooded over the future of Western civilization, wrote a best-selling tribute to Winston Churchill, and produced a...

“A proud and old-fashioned man with an eminent forehead, cosmopolitan accent, and erudite but personal prose style, Lukacs was a maverick among historians. In a profession where liberals were a clear majority, he was sharply critical of the left and of the cultural revolution of the 1960s.”

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Kate McKinnon picked up some Hungarian

Kate's Hungarian Rap = 🔥🔥🔥

“WHAT is going on? What is HAPPENING?”

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Thomas Peterffy (Péterffy Tamás), 1944-, digital trader

DAVID KESTENBAUM: Thomas Peterffy grew up in Hungary after World War II. His first experience with trading happened when he was around 12. A friend went across the border to Austria and brought back something truly precious.

THOMAS PETERFFY: Juicy Fruit Gum - these were beautiful, yellow Juicy Fruit (laughter) Gum sticks.

KESTENBAUM: Peterffy cut each stick into five small pieces and sold the pieces to his friends at school for a profit.

PETERFFY: Eventually, the principal found out about this, called me down into his office and he said, well, where is your communist conscience? And I didn't know what he was talking about (laughter).

Full story: We built a robot that types

Bonus content

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Agoston Haraszthy (Haraszthy Ágoston), 1812-1869, town-builder, winemaker

"Often referred to as the "Father of California Viticulture," or the "Father of Modern Winemaking in California".  He was the first Hungarian to settle permanently in the United States and only the second to write a book about the country in his native language. He is remembered in Wisconsin as the founder of the oldest incorporated village in the state. He also operated the first commercial steamboat on the upper Mississippi River. In San Diego he is remembered as the first town marshal and the first county sheriff. In California he introduced more than three hundred varieties of European grapes." - wikipedia

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Tibor Gergely (Gergely Tibor), 1900-1978, Illustrator

"Painter and illustrator Tibor Gergely was born in Budapest in 1900. A nearly entirely self-taught artist, he studied art briefly in Vienna, leaving formal education after six months to become a stage and puppet designer for a Viennese marionette theater. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. Here, he supported himself as a commercial artist while showing his work in both European and American galleries. He contributed several covers to the New Yorker during the 1940s, and gained a reputation as one of America's finest children's book illustrators during the 1950s and 60s. He lived and worked in New York until his death in 1978."

http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=tibor+gergely

http://www.tiborgergely.com/site/About_Tibor_Gergely.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=118mzYxj-IU

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Sir Georg Solti, KBE (Solti György), 1912-1997, Conductor

"In many respects, Sir Georg Solti neatly fulfilled the caricature of the orchestral maestro – lean, intense and excitable, with an indeterminate foreign accent and something daemonic about his fiery-eyed charisma and panther-like body language on the podium. Here was a man possessed, who admits that when he was clambering his way up the career ladder he would have murdered his grandfather to get what he wanted."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-ClNBcZF0

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Andrew Grove (Gróf András), 1936-2016, former CEO of Intel Corporation

"Th[e] decision to employ Grove as director of operations was, however, in the words of Tim Jackson’s history of Intel, "so bizarre that it mystified most of the people who were watching the new business take shape." Up to that point, Grove had virtually no manufacturing experience at all, plus he was decidedly unusual. Jackson continued, "Grove spoke English with an accent that was almost incomprehensible. Over his head, he wore an awkward hearing-aid device that looked like a product of Eastern European engineering." Furthermore, he had a severe temper, and an equally severe manner of maintaining discipline and control. None-the-less, Noyce and Moore admired his intelligence and drive, and they believed he was the right man. Grove tacitly agreed, leaving Fairchild almost immediately.

The doubts held by onlookers concerning his abilities were quickly put to rest. Grove guided the development of manufacturing processes first for the company’s computer memory products, then for its first general-purpose microprocessor (the component that serves as the “brain” of modern desktop computers), outstripping all competitors and even the company which had licensed their technology to provide the “second-source” so important to computer companies at that time.”

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/andrew-s-grove

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CT7lg3vIzY

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Balthazar Korab (Koráb Boldizsár), 1926-2013, Architect / Photographer

"[Balthazar] looks not just for the best composed image but for one that will capture the heart and soul of the design. I have great admiration and affection for this elegant man  who never quite lost his charming Hungarian accent."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balthazar_Korab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bC_2psgp8Y

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Edward Teller (Teller Ede), 1908-2003, Nuclear physicist

"While many colleagues did not share Dr. Teller’s political views, to some scientists his was a voice of realism crying out in a wilderness of liberal naveté. But Dr. Teller’s critics were as impassioned as his supporters. During the Vietnam War, Dr. Teller was the target of unrelenting vilification from antiwar activists. He was seen as the model for Dr. Strangelove, the motion picture character with an artifical arm who "loved the bomb" and spoke with a Central European accent.

Dr. Teller’s English, though fluent and eloquent, revealed his Hungarian roots, and he had an artificial replacement for the foot he lost in 1928 as a student when he jumped from a moving Munich streetcar.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vnNwSwTfsU

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/10/obituaries/10TELL.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Teller