János Aczél (mathematician)


János Dezső Aczél , also known as John Aczel, was a Hungarian-Canadian mathematician, who specialized in functional equations and information theory.

Professional career

Aczél earned a doctorate in mathematical analysis from the University of Budapest, and held positions at the University of Cologne, Kossuth University, University of Miskolc, and University of Szeged. He joined the University of Waterloo faculty in 1965, eventually becoming Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics.
He was the founder of the journal Aequationes Mathematicae, first published in 1968, and remained its honorary editor-in-chief.

Awards and honors

Aczél held honorary degrees from the University of Karlsruhe, the University of Graz, and the University of Silesia in Katowice.
In 1971, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1990 he became an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he became an honorary member of the Hamburg Mathematical Society, the oldest active mathematical society in the world.
He was the 1988 winner of the Santiago Ramón y Cajal Medal. In 2004 he won the Kampé de Fériet Award of the annual Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty conference, "for his pioneering work on the theory of functional equations, with applications in many fields, such as information measures, index numbers, group decision making, aggregation, production functions, laws of science, theory of measurement and utility theory."
Issues of the journal Aequationes Mathematicae were dedicated to Aczél in 1999, 2005, and 2010, in honor of his 75th, 80th, and 85th birthdays.

Books

Aczél was the author or co-author of: