László Fejes Tóth

Who was László Fejes Tóth?

László Fejes Tóth was a Hungarian mathematician who specialized in geometry. He proved that a lattice pattern is the most efficient way to pack centrally symmetric convex sets on the Euclidean plane. He also investigated the sphere packing problem. He was the first to show, in 1953, that proof of the Kepler conjecture can be reduced to a finite case analysis and, later, that the problem might be solved using a computer.

He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a director of the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics. He received both the Kossuth Prize and State Award.

Together with H.S.M. Coxeter and Paul Erdős, he laid the foundations of discrete geometry.