Károly Simonyi (18 October 1916 – 9 October 2001) was a Hungarian physicist and writer. He was professor of electrical engineering at Technical University of Budapest and the author of the popular tabletop book A Cultural History of Physics (A fizika kultúrtörténete, 1978).
Simonyi was born the seventh of ten children in a small village in western Hungary. Simonyi earned degrees respectively in engineering at the Technical University of Budapest and in law at the University of Pecs. Following World War II, he taught electrical engineering at the University of Sopron and in 1952 he became a professor at the Technical University, where he was known as an outstanding teacher and organized the Department of Theoretical Electrical Engineering.[2]
In the 1960s he lost his directorship at KFKI Physics Research Institute, his post as department head, and finally his professorial post due to the political climate in Hungary.[3] He then undertook writing the story of the history of physics and the cultural, philosophical, and societal movements that had shaped and been shaped by its development.[4]
^In the foreword to the English edition of A Cultural History of Physics, his son Charles Simonyi states: "Yet, in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s in Hungary, his quasi-apolitical personal conduct, based on the age-old virtues of hard work, good character, and charity, was interpreted as political defiance that could not be countenanced by the state." [1]
^Simonyi, Károly (2012). A Cultural History of Physics. A K Peters/CRC Press. ISBN9781568813295.
