Former professor of Nobel-prize laureate Krausz talks about his bright student in an interview
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The relationship between BME and the research group of Ferenc Krausz varies in intensity, but is continuous, said Péter Richter, professor and former lecturer of the Nobel Prize laureate.
Ferenc Krausz graduated in electrical engineering from BME in 1985. He started his research at the BME Institute of Physics, and had worked in the university’s laser laboratory for three years. We asked Péter Richter, Professor at the Department of Atomic Physics (Institute of Physics) of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), about the university years and later research relations, bme.hu wrote.
Professor, what memories do you have of your former student?
It is difficult to tell from the teacher’s desk who will become a Nobel Prize laureate, but you can see who is ambitious. Ferenc Krausz was one of my students who always tried to make the most of the lectures and seminars. He studied to become an electrical engineer at BME and also participated in the physicist training programme at Eötvös Loránd University, which showed how practice-oriented he was even back then. He wanted to put the things he had calculated or predicted in theory into practice. He had the talent and the perseverance to achieve his goals, and thanks to this, in collaboration with several colleagues, he succeeded.
What role do you think BME and its professors played in the development of his academic career?
As he himself wrote, one of his greatest influences was József Bakos, who was then a visiting professor at the BME Department of Experimental Physics. He also had the intellectual mentorship of Győző Farkas, who worked at the Central Institute for Physical Research and theoretically predicted the possibility of producing such a very short pulse. The problem was that at that time the necessary tools were not available.
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