Béla Bollobás

Béla Bollobás (born August 3, 1943 in Budapest, Hungary) is a leading Hungarian mathematician who has worked in various areas of mathematics, including functional analysis, combinatorics and graph theory. His first doctorate was for work in discrete geometry in 1967, after which he spent a year in Moscow with Gelfand. After spending a year in Oxford he went to Cambridge, where in 1971 he received a Ph.D. in functional analysis.

He is member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1970, and is currently the Jabie Hardin Chair Professor at the University of Memphis.

He is known as an important expositor of combinatorial mathematics, on which he has written a number of books, and for spreading the combinatorial approach. His students include Fields Medal winner, and current Rouse Ball Professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Tim Gowers, Imre Leader, also professor of mathematics at Cambridge, and Professors of Mathematics at the University of Leeds, Charles Read and Jonathan Partington.

He is also a sportsman, having represented Oxford University at modern pentathlon, and Cambridge University at fencing. His wife, Gabriella Bollobás is an accomplished sculptor and painter.