Vera T. Sós

Who is Vera T. Sós?

Vera T. Sós is a Hungarian mathematician, specializing in number theory and combinatorics. She was a student and close collaborator of both Paul Erdős and Alfréd Rényi. She also collaborated frequently with her husband Paul Turán, the analyst, number theorist, and combinatorist. Until 1987, she worked at the Department of Analysis at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Since then, she has been employed by the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics. She was elected a corresponding member, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1997, Sós was awarded the Széchenyi Prize.

One of her results is the Kővári–Sós–Turán theorem concerning the maximum possible number of edges in a bipartite graph that does not contain certain complete subgraphs. Another is the following so-called friendship theorem proved with Paul Erdõs and Alfréd Rényi: if, in a finite graph, any two vertices have exactly one common neighbor, then some vertex is joined to all others. In number theory, Sós proved the three distance theorem, conjectured by Hugo Steinhaus.