It has recently been announced that Endre Szemeredi received the highest award in mathematics, the Abel prize.
I have good memories from Szemeredi at Rutgers CS. When I got my first result, I was honored when he asked for a presentation and he kindly complimented me. The stories of his other-wordliness were also legendary... One of the better ones is from my good collaborator, Jaikumar Radhakrishnan, who was his student at the time. When he felt desperate about lack of progress one day, he asked Szemeredi if he thought he could ever complete a Ph.D., Szemeredi answered: "Oh, don't worry, none of my students have ever failed to graduate".
It wasn't until several years later, during a post-doc in Hungary, when Jaikumar asked Szemeredi's wife about his previous students. "No, you were his first student!" was the reply.
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