László Lovász receives the 2025 Erasmus Medal in Barcelona

• Mathematician László Lovász received the 2025 Erasmus Medal from the Academia Europaea yesterday at the PRBB in Barcelona, where he delivered the lecture “The Beauty of Mathematics”.

• Renowned for his work in graph theory and discrete mathematics, Lovász has shaped modern understanding of the links between mathematics, computer science, and information theory.

This Wednesday, October 16, Hungarian mathematician László Lovász received the 2025 Erasmus Medal, the highest distinction awarded by the Academia Europaea, during a ceremony held at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) as part of the annual Building Bridges 2025 conference.

The award recognises his exceptional career in discrete mathematics and computer science, as well as his significant contributions to European scientific culture. A former President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Professor Emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), and Research Professor at the HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, Lovász is regarded as one of the most influential theorists of his generation.

The Erasmus Medal citation described Lovász as “a towering mathematician of our age”, whose work has transformed the landscape of discrete mathematics and its links with classical branches of pure and applied mathematics. Over six decades, his elegant and powerful ideas have solved major open problems and created entirely new subfields, from the Lovász Local Lemma and the proofs of the weak perfect graph and Kneser conjectures to the Lenstra–Lenstra–Lovász lattice reduction algorithm, the ellipsoid method in combinatorial optimisation, and the theory of graph limits.

The ceremony, introduced by Jaume Bertranpetit, Academic Director of the Academia Europaea Barcelona Hub, featured a laudation by János Pach (Rényi Institute and EPFL), who outlined Lovász’s long-standing influence across mathematics and computer science. The event concluded with Lovász’s Erasmus Lecture, titled “The Beauty of Mathematics”, a reflection on the inner elegance and coherence that connect seemingly distant branches of the mathematical sciences.

The event was attended by Guillem Perarnau, Marc Noy, and Oriol Serra, researchers at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and affiliated members of the CRM, along with Carme Cascante, Director of the CRM, who represented the centre at the ceremony.

The Erasmus Medal is one of the most prestigious honors granted by the Academia Europaea for outstanding scientific achievements. With this award, László Lovász joins a distinguished group of laureates who have strengthened the bridges between science, technology, the humanities, and society.