Zoltan Kodaly is famous in his own right, yet his name is often associated with that of his fellow countryman, Bela Bartok. The two composers teamed up in 1905 and began assembling and transcribing Magyar folk songs. Moreover, they made music together and, like Bartok, Kodaly was totally influenced by Hungarian ethnic music. This is immediately evident in his famous pieces such as his comic opera ‘Hary Janos’, ‘Psalmus Hungaricus’, his orchestralpieces, ‘Peacock Variations’ and the ‘Dances of Marosszek and Galanta’. Kodaly also composed a prodigious output of choral music, which was particularly focused on children. Although he is more widely known as a composer, he was also a music critic and a music teacher whose methods, still to this day, continue to influence educational institutions.

Endre Ady could arguably be the greatest Hungarian poet of the last century. He is a legendary short story writer and a prolific journalist who assumed the role of “the conscience of the Hungarian nation.” Endre Ady is most famous for his brave and sensual love poems; however, one should remember that he also composed revolutionary and religious poetry. Altogether, in 12 years he wrote nearly 1,000 poems and had 10 of his collections of verses published. Ady's first important volume, ‘Meg Egyszer’, was issued in 1903, but his real breakthrough was three years later when his second book , ‘Uj Versek’, was released. His successive tomes include ‘Ver es Arany’ (1907) and ‘Az Illes Szekeren’ (1908). His book of poetry, ‘A Halottak Elen’ (1918), revealed the author's passive style. Ady's last poem was titled ‘Az Utolso Hajok’, which ironically means ‘The Last Ships'.

Lossonczy is one of the most prominent and legendary Hungarain modern artists of the 20th Century. He is a winner of the Kossuth Prize, the highest award for any performing artist in all of Hungary. His many tremendous compositions, while some are subtle and others intense, reflect his commitment to pushing art beyond the predictable, and his artistic-attitude can be described as almost post-modern. He is equally passionate about creating intense, thought-provoking pictures and paintings in which the means of expression are reduced to nothing more than a few circles. Using a variety of media (pencil, water colour, Indian ink and gouache), Lossonczy is able to evoke the dread associated with war, but also reveals the anticipation of a new start. One of his most well-known compositions, ‘Great Storm Cleanses’, is a remembrance of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

“I sat there on the quayside by the landing, a melon rind was drifting on the flow. I delved into my fate, just understanding: the surface chatters, while it's calm below. As if my heart had been its very source, troubled, wise was the Danube, mighty force. Like muscles when you work and lift the axe, or harvest, hammer, excavate a grave, so did the water tighten, surge, relax with every current, every breezy wave. Like Mother, dandled, told a tale, caressed, laundered the dirt of all of Budapest.” –Jozsef, ‘By the Danube’(1936)

Jozsef's striking and mature verses established him as one of the most noteworthy Hungarian poets. He comprised some 600 poems written over the span of merely 15 years, and his legacy is remembered alongside Petofi and Ady. He made his debut in 1922 with a collection entitled ‘A Szpeseg Koldusa’. It was followed by ‘Nem en Kialtok’ (1925), ‘Nincsen Apam se Anyam’ (1929) and ‘Kulvarosi Ej’ (1932). Other than poetry, he also wrote essays, such as ‘Irodalom és Szocializms’ (1931) and ‘Hegel, Marx, Freud’ (1934). His political writings are included in the third volume of Jozsef's collected works (1958). ‘Medvetanc’ (1934) and ‘Nagyon Faj’ (1936) were his final collections and shortly after their publication, 32-year-old Jozsef committed suicide.

“Eventually some friends at Politechnika got wind of my invention and, by 1977, it was in toy stores throughout Budapest.” -Rubik

Born in Budapest, Erno Rubik is a world-renown Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture. He is especially famous for inventing the Rubik's Cube and two other mechanical puzzles – Rubik's Magic and Rubik's Snake. His father was a flight engineer and his mother a poet. Erno Rubik attended the Technical University of Budapest and graduated with a degree in architectural engineering 1967. He worked as an architectural engineer between 1971 and 1975; however, he was fascinated with object alternation in space and he invented The Cube in 1974. Afterwards, he lectured at the Budapest College of Applied Arts. In the 1980s, he worked as an editor for a journal called ‘...Es Jatek’, then he established his own studio where he designed furniture and games. In 1990, he was appointed president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy. Recently. Presently, Rubik has devoted his time to the development of video games.

Born into a wealthy family and raised in Pest, Jeno Hunyadi revealed his exceptional mathematical talents at an early age. As a boy, he experienced the revolutionary protests that took place in Pest on March 15, 1848. Later, he studied mathematics at the Technical College of Pest, but in search for better resources, Hunyadi went to study abroad in 1857, first in Vienna, then to Berlin. It was in Berlin where he was influenced by such lecturers as Kummer and Kronecker. In 1864, he submitted his doctoral thesis on the theory of algebraic curves at the University of Gottingen. Back in Pest the following year, Jeno Hunyadi accepted a post as a dozent at the Technical College. He was elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, yet soon after he was appointed as a professor at the Technical University. His mathematical contributions concern geometrical topics and determinants.

“A real Hungarian music can originate only if there is a real Hungarian gentry. This is why the Budapest public is so absolutely hopeless. The place has attracted a haphazardly heterogeneous rootless group of Germans and Jews; they make up the majority of Budapest's population.”

Bela Bartok was one of the leading composers of the 20th Century. Along with his friend and fellow composer, Zoltan Kodaly, he researched peasant folk music throughout Hungary and Romania; it was Bartok’s compositions following this research that interest in Hungarian folk music began to rise. In his youth, he established himself as a master pianist and he composed an enormous collection of piano pieces. A number of his works included fantastic percussion scoring, such as his ‘Sonate for 2 Pianos and Percussion’ and ‘Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste’ and ‘Bluebeard's Castle’. His other masterpieces include the ‘Third Piano Concerto’ and a violin solo called the ‘Solo Sonate’.

Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian writer of Jewish descent, became world-famous in 2002 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. As a child, Kertesz was deported to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald. These painful experiences in the concentration camps were inspirations for his first and most popular novel, ‘Sorstalansag’ (1975). It was translated into English under the title ‘Fateless’ in 1992. After World War II, he returned to Budapest and worked for a local newspaper until he was dismissed after the paper adopted the party line in 1951. During the mid-1950s, he became a translator for German authors (including Nietzsche, Freud and Wittgenstein) devoted to writing. Among his other works are ‘A Kudarc’ (Fiasco,1988), ‘Kaddis a Meg Nem Szuletetett Gyermekert’ (Kaddish for a Child not Born ,1990) and ‘A Szamuzott Nyelv’ (The Exiled Language, 2001).