Hungarian Mathematician
1905–1977

A pioneering theorist of a mathematical discipline with important applications in computer science, Rózsa Politzer was born February 17, 1905, in Budapest, Hungary. Although she never married, Politzer changed her name to Rózsa Péter in 1930. Initially, Péter intended to fulfill her father's wish for her to become a chemist, but lectures by mathematicians enticed her to a course that would change her life as well as the field of mathematics. Through lectures and papers in the 1930s, she promoted the study of recursive functions as a distinct field of mathematics. This aspect of number theory considers functions that are used to study the structure of number classes or functions in terms of the complexity of the calculations required to determine them. Since theories of relay contact systems, cybernetics, and computer programming are dependent on recursive functions, Péter's work is...