25th of June – The birthday of Frigyes Karinthy, the pioneer of ’six degrees of separation’
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Did you know that the famous ‘six degrees of separation’ theory was originally set out by a Hungarian? This person is Frigyes Karinthy, one of the most popular Hungarian writers, who is still quoted a lot of times up to this day, as he had a remarkable sense of humour and many popular sayings.
He was born into a middle-class family on the 25th of June, 1887. Despite his talent in humanities, he started learning natural sciences after high school. He didn’t finish his studies but obtained such amount of knowledge, which later made him the most versed in sciences among his writer colleagues, and became one of the few authors who were both educated in humanities and sciences.
He was part of the Hungarian literature life from a young age: firstly, as a journalist (and for ever), and later, as a poet, writer. His literary parody about the style and methods of former poets, writers, ‘That’s how you write’, made him instantly famous. Humour became his fate, as everyone knew him mainly for that specialty. His other famous work is ‘Please, Sir’, the collection of his school memories.
He was a very open-minded philosopher, the most conscious and consistent descendant of the 18th century Enlightenment, the representative of the century’s humanists seeking sciences. He was probably the most original and most surprising writer, novelist of his era when it comes to the themes of his works, and a perfect example of this is his novel ‘Chain-links’, which set out the ‘six degrees of separation’ idea for the first time.
According to the six degrees of separation theory, we truly live in a small world, as two people can be contacted through a relationship network no matter where they live in the world. In this network, two people are divided by maximum 5 people, meaning that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away from any other person in the world.
