1895-1985

Hungarian mathematician who published numerous articles and contributed to the study of orthogonal polynomials and Toeplitz matrices. After graduating from Budapest University, Szego studied at the German universities of Berlin and Göttingen and served in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry during World War I. In 1926 he was invited to join the staff at Königsberg, where he remained until the Nazis made academic life in Germany untenable for Jews. He left for the United States in 1934 and secured a teaching position at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Four years later, he relocated to Stanford University, where he spent the rest of his academic life.