Jánossy, Lajos

Born 1912 in Budapest. Hungarian physicist. Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; vice-president of the academy from 1958 to 1973. Member of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party.

Jánossy studied at the universities of Vienna and Berlin. From 1939 to 1950, he worked in Great Britain. In 1950 he became a professor at the University of Budapest. From 1956 to 1970, he was the director of the Central Research Institute for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Jánossy is the chairman of Hungary’s Atomic Energy Committee. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna.

Jánossy’s main works deal with the physics of cosmic rays, the theory of relativity, and quantum theory. Together with the British physicist G. Rochester, Jánossy discovered penetrating showers in cosmic rays. Jánossy developed statistical methods of processing the results of measurements.