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Cornelius Lanczos

Hungarian mathematician and physicist

1893 – 1974aged 81

A Hungarian-born mathematician and physicist who developed the Lanczos algorithm, a method for approximating eigenvalues of large matrices that remains foundational to numerical linear algebra and modern computing. He also worked directly with Einstein on general relativity and later contributed to NASA's early orbital calculations, part of a wave of Hungarian-Jewish scientists who fled Nazism and reshaped 20th-century physics and mathematics in exile.

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