Lajos Jánossy

Lajos Jánossy was a Hungarian physicist and mathematician, born on 2 March 1912 and died on 2 March 1978, whose mathematical interest lay in probability, statistics and the treatment of experimental measurements. From an early age he was drawn to the application of probability and calculus to results in nuclear and particle physics, and he is known for statistical analysis methods for cosmic rays. While at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies he published monographs on cosmic rays and on particle showers, and in the latter introduced the joint probability densities that are now called Jánossy densities in the theory of random point processes. His later books include a 1965 work on the theory and practice of evaluating measurements and a 1960 German text on the foundations of probability. He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, lived in Vienna, Berlin, Britain and Ireland before returning to Budapest in 1950, and directed the Central Research Institute for Physics from 1956 to 1970.