Paul Nemenyi - Biography

Biography

Nemenyi was born to a Hungarian Jewish family. His father was Desiderius Nemenyi. (Dezsö born 1883 in Rákospalota, since 1950 Budapest) His uncle was Dr. Ambrus Neményi, born in Pécel, ca 20 km east of Budapest. His aunt was Berta Koppély (Whose parents were Adolf Koppély (1809-1883) and Rozsa von Hatvany-Deutsch) His family's art collection included works by Klimt, Kandinsky and Matisse. At the age of 17, Nemenyi won the Hungarian national mathematics competition. Nemenyi obtained his doctorate in mathematics in Berlin in 1922 and lectured on fluid dynamics at the Technical University of Berlin. In the early 1930s, he published a textbook on mathematical mechanics that became required reading in German universities. Stripped of his position when the Nazis came to power, he also had to leave Hungary where anti-Semitic laws had been enacted, and found work for a time in Copenhagen.

He arrived in the USA at the outbreak of World War II. He briefly held a number of teaching positions in succession and took part in hydraulic research at the State University of Iowa. In 1941 he was appointed instructor at the University of Colorado, and in 1944 at the State College of Washington.

In Germany, Nemenyi belonged to a Socialist party called the ISK, which believed that truth could be arrived at through neo-Kantian Socratic principles. He was an animal-rights supporter, who was a strict vegan and refused to wear anything made of wool. In 1930, Nemenyi entrusted his 3 year old first son, Peter Nemenyi, to be looked after by the socialist vegetarian community, visiting him once a year.

Theodore von Kármán wrote of Nemenyi: “When he came to this country, he went to scientific meetings in an open shirt without a tie and was very much disappointed as I advised him to dress as anyone else. He told me that he thought this was a country of freedom, and the man is only judged according to his internal values and not his external appearance.”

In 1947 Nemenyi was appointed a physicist with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White Oak, Maryland. He was head of the Theoretical Mechanics Section at the laboratory and one of the country's principal authorities on elasticity and fluid dynamics. Nemenyi was best known for using what he called the inverse or semi-inverse approach to obtain numerous exact solutions of the nonlinear equations of gas dynamics, many of them representing rotational flows of nonuniform total energy (see article by Nemenyi and Prim in Selected List of Publications below, which is Nemenyi's most highly cited work, though it has had no citations since 1985. Exact solutions may have less practical importance since the widespread availability of computers.).

Nemenyi's scientific knowledge extended well beyond the subjects of his researches. He has been described as having “extreme versatile interests and erudition”. Nemenyi's interest and ability encompassed several nonscientific fields. He collected children's art and sometimes lectured upon it. In 1951, he published a critique of the entire Encyclopædia Britannica, and suggested improvements for such diverse sections as psychology and psychoanalysis.

Paul Nemenyi died on March 1, 1952, at the age of 56. He was survived by two sons: Peter Nemenyi, then a student of mathematics at Princeton University. and Bobby Fischer, the world chess champion.