B. Sz.-Nagy Medal

Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy Medal

Year 2020

The Bolyai Institute of the University of Szeged is pleased to announce that the Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy Medal for the year 2020 has been awarded to

Franciszek Hugon Szafraniec, Professor Emeritus of Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.

Professor Szafraniec's research in Mathematics covers a wide range of topics. His initial adventure with Nonlinear Analysis culminated in 1968 when he received his PhD degree from the Jagiellonian University. Then he suddenly turned to Operator Theory catching, in the right moment, the most interesting part of it - Dilation Theory. He got immediately fascinated by Sz.-Nagy's Appendix (1955), which has inspired his research to date. Professor Szafraniec's rare ability of finding associations between seemingly diverse topics allowed him to consider Sz.-Nagy's general dilation theorem as the source of many ideas leading even beyond Operator Theory itself. His observation that in the proof of the aforesaid dilation theorem the reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) tool is encoded raised his interest in RKHS significantly and led him to profound applications in e.g. Complex Variables, Harmonic Analysis and Quantum Theory. Professor Szafraniec published four research papers in Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum, two of them related to Dilation Theory, one of them having received over 60 citations.

Due to the current pandemic the official award ceremony of the Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy Medal will be held at a later date.