Biography

He was born in Terézváros, Budapest, into a Jewish family at the house located at 76 Király Street. His father, Antal Wigner, was a merchant from Kiskunfélegyháza, and his mother, Erzsébet Einhorn, was born in Eisenstadt. In March 1919, after the communists came to power, the entire Wigner family left the country. They lived in Austria until November, where the family converted to the Lutheran faith.

Career

At the Fasori Evangelical Gymnasium, he was one grade ahead of John von Neumann and had the opportunity to study mathematics under László Rátz, a dedicated scholar and teacher. He was taught physics by the renowned teacher Sándor Mikola. The school's spirit had a significant impact on him. In 1920, he enrolled in the chemical engineering program at the Budapest University of Technology, but from 1921, he continued his studies at the Technical University of Berlin (now the Technical University of Berlin). By 1929, his publications had attracted widespread attention in the physics community. In 1931, he published "Group Theory and its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra," a work that provided a tool still used in theoretical physics today. In the early 1940s, he became a pioneer in the peaceful use of atomic energy: in 1941, he designed the first experimental nuclear reactor and suggested using water to slow down neutrons.