(Miskolc, January 1st, 1885 – Budapest, January 2nd, 1945)
Rudolf Ortvay, an organiser and school-founder in scientific public life, developed Hungarian theoretical physics between the two world wars.
On his father's side there were traditions of scientific professions in his family; his paternal grandmother was a Jendrassik's daughter, among her relatives there were several medical academicians.
He attended the medical faculty of the Royal Hungarian University of Sciences 
for two years and then he studied mathematics and physics at the faculty of sciences of the same university. He finished his studies at Göttingen University, where his professors were, among others, Hilbert, Klein and Minkowski.
In 1908 Károly Tangl, professor of experimental physics invited him to University of Kolozsvár(now Cluj/Napoca, Romania)
Here Ortvay prepared his doctoral dissertation on the pressure-dependence of dielectric, then for a few months he worked beside Debye and later for two years at Sommerfeld. His papers written here contributed to his extraordinary full nomination as professor of theoretical physics in 1916 following Gyula Farkas.
After World War I Szeged - a town in Southern Hungary - obtained a university. Szeged University became scientific end educational center in the 1920 and 1930s. Here Frigyes Riesz taught modern mathematics, Rudolf Ortvay quantum mechanics, Zoltan Bay atomic physics, Albert Szent-Györgyi biochemistry, László Kalmár computer science
Taking part in university life in Szeged already as full professor and as dean for a year Ortvay wrote an important course-book on modern physics. When quantum theory revolutionising physics was being born and formed at the end of the twenties, he continued to make up-to-date reports on it, already as professor at the Theoretical Physics Institute of the Péter Pázmány University of Sciences in Budapest. His nomination provided him with the opportunity to achieve his most important – maybe his only – aim: to lay the foundations of modern Hungarian theoretical physics.
The theme of his lectures covered fifty years from one semester to the other. He created subjects taught for one semester like „Introduction to the corpuscular theory of material and Introduction to quantum mechanics”. Beside these in the early days he gave lectures on the relativity theory covering one semester and in the forties he gave lectures on quantum electrodynamics also covering one semester. On two occasions he gave lectures covering two semesters with the title „Theory of spectra with a view to group theory”.
The greatest result of Ortvay's activity was that he created an opportunity and an environment for modern Hungarian theoretical physics.
In autumn 1929 he started his worthily famous lecture courses, where specialists and those who were interested had the possibility to deal with contemporary physics due to the most excellent home and foreign lecturers. These courses always gave evidence of how very many people Ortvay knew both at home and abroad, of his connections and his friendships with his students, colleagues and professors. Lecturers like John von Neumann, Imre Bródy, Kornél Lánczos, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner can be mentioned here. At Ortvay's Colloquium also secondary school teachers were present, and they had the opportunity to discuss their research. Besides the great Hungarians, Ortvay invited to speak such forign scientists as Debye, Dirac, Heisenberg, Planck, Sommerfeld as well.
He carried on regular correspondence with Hevesy, Neumann, Wigner, and others, that built an intellectual bridge keeping Budapest aware of scientific progress even in the years of war.
Memberships: correspondent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1925), board member of the Loránd Eötvös Mathematical and Physical Society, the Society of Natural Sciences and the Hungarian Aero Association, and member of the Hungarian Philosophical Association and the Stella Society of Astronomy.
