University of Szeged

The University of Szeged is one of Hungary's leading research universities, with roots going back to 1872 when it was founded in Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca in Romania). It relocated to Szeged after the First World War and has been the intellectual heart of the city ever since. The university campus spreads through the southern part of the Belváros and includes some handsome late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century buildings alongside more recent additions.

The campus is worth a short walk, both for the architecture and for the atmosphere it creates — Szeged's student-city character, which distinguishes it from quieter provincial Hungarian towns, flows directly from the presence of around 20,000 students. The Bolyai Mathematical Institute, named for the Hungarian co-discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry, is based here and is one of several departments with strong international reputations. The university's botanical garden, open to the public, is a pleasant escape from the urban centre.

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A story
Albert Szent-Györgyi, who worked at the University of Szeged in the 1930s, isolated vitamin C here — partly by working with Hungarian paprika, which he found to be an extraordinarily rich source of ascorbic acid. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937 for this work. The paprika connection was both convenient and poetic: Szeged is the centre of Hungarian paprika production, and the spice that defines the city's cuisine turned out to contain the molecule that defined a Nobel laureate's career.

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