Both teachers were outstanding in mathematics and in the teaching of mathematics. They published in the world famous Hungarian Mathematical and Physical Journal for Secondary Schools (nowadays so called KöMaL), they wrote articles and posed problems for young mathematicians. They could pass their knowledge to their students. They composed precise mathematical definitions, theorems and proofs.

In 1930, Egerváry published a paper on the arrangements of the roots of trinomial equations in the complex plane. He studied the distribution of the roots based on their arguments and moduli. The central idea here came from an interesting observation: the roots of the trinomial equations can be interpreted as the equilibrium points of unit masses that are located at the vertices of two regular concentric polygons centred at the origin in the complex plane. Using the symmetry and continuity properties of this force field he showed how the roots could be separated according to their arguments. In this separation Egerváry determined sectors in the complex plane, where each sector contains a root of the equation, and the sum of the angles of these sectors is of order π/2. He also gave a characterization of the distribution of the roots according to their moduli. Egerváry localized the roots in annulus form. The crowning achievement of his work was a synthesis of these results. Based on previous studies, he was able to separate the roots into sectors of annuli.

... describes the duality theorem for the weighted bipartite matching problem, which is called today the assignment problem, proves the integrality result, and develops the underlying idea of the first primal-dual type algorithm that is called throughout the literature the 'Hungarian Method', a name introduced by H Kuhn who actually used Egerváry's ideas to develop an efficient algorithm. It is remarkable that this algorithm turned out to be strongly polynomial.

A characteristic feature of Jenö Egerváry's academic works was his wide-ranging scientific interests. His early results were related to Leopold Fejér's research topics, and he wrote a number of papers on analysis and function theory. However, at this time, he also became interested in algebraic equations. In his first papers, he extensively applied the theory of determinants and demonstrated how important and useful this tool was. At the same time, he became deeply interested in problems in theoretical physics and geometry. For about 15 years, starting in 1938, he published his results in geometry and differential equations. In geometry, he examined the important and deep question about the curvature of metric curves, which is related to measurement and applications. In the last 6 years of his life, he almost exclusively devoted his efforts to matrix theory, with an emphasis on its applications. In all the works of Egerváry and in his lectures there is an unmistakable striving for clarity, precision, and elegance. His style was concise, he didn't use superfluous words, but it was not at the expense of clarity. One of his main tools through which he was able to keep the reader's or listener's interest was that of illustration. Another typical feature which runs throughout his works is the need to show that his results - even when they belonged to the most abstract areas - had concrete applications.

I learnt mathematics from him. He was an outstanding lecturer. He was a very clear-headed teacher. He always spoke about mathematics in a crystal-clear way. I often attended his examinations, not only when I was being examined. I observed he had about 15 to 16 questions from which he posed some to the students. If somebody could not answer them then the professor failed the student. I worked out the answers and organized seminars for my fellow students. Those students who were prepared by me for the examinations never failed. Here began my love for teaching.

Egerváry did not enjoy the results of his efforts in organising the Institute. A new figure appeared on the horizon in the person of Alfréd Rényi, a mathematician well-grounded in the doctrines of Marxism. He had recently returned from the Soviet Union, where he had completed his doctoral dissertation. Soon he supplanted Egerváry as head of the Research Institute.

For our country and the society of mathematicians it was a great loss, that Jenö Egerváry, with all his creative energy, took his own life. He wanted to make a point at the end of a period of repression which began in 1958. This process was an unworthy and humiliating act of human denigration in his life. There was also a personal vendetta against him under a financial-economic pretext which he felt also attacked his scientific esteem.

In 1958, in the period of the Communist repression that followed the 1956 revolution, fearing imprisonment for specious accusations, Jenö Egerváry committed suicide.

Jenő Egerváry ... is best known for his contribution to the Hungarian method. However, his research activity included much more than that and he obtained many important and genuine results in other areas of mathematics and its applications. He was also an outstanding teacher and a key person of Hungarian applied mathematics until 1958, when he committed suicide. This was the aftermath of the 1956 revolution of Hungary with a harsh oppression. Not long after Egerváry's death, his research department was dissolved and by the early seventies he and his results were rarely mentioned in mathematical circles apart from his relation to the Hungarian method. At the end of the eighties his linear algebra related research came into light due to its connection with the ABS [named after J Abaffy, A Galanti, E Spedicato, 'A class of direct methods for linear systems' (1984)] and other conjugate direction methods used in optimization algorithms. In 1999, the Bergamo University of Italy issued an Egerváry prize to Zhang Liwei of Dalien University of China. The Hungarian Operations Research Society was founded in 1990. It was one of HORS' principal aims to reach a higher level recognition of Egerváry and applied mathematics as well. The Society organized a special memorial session for Egerváry on the 25th Conference of HORS and established the Egerváry medal for lifetime Operations Research achievements in 2004. ... Due to the efforts of HORS and former students of Egerváry, a statue of Egerváry was erected in the campus of the Technical University of Budapest in 2006. In 2007 Professors Emilio Spedicato and Tamás Rapcsák proposed a memorial celebration of Egerváry on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death. Two such parallel events took place. The first one was organized as a special section of the 39th Annual Conference of the Italian Operational Research Society held in Ischia, 7-11 September 2008. ...The second event took place as a special memorial workshop organized by the Operations Research Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and by the Hungarian Operations Research Society in Budapest Tech (Budapest) on the 12th December, 2008. The latter event consisted of 9 lectures that partly covered the scientific activity of Egerváry. It is worth noting that between 1918 and 1921 Egerváry was a teacher at the State Industrial College which was one of the legal predecessors of the Budapest Tech college.