Editorial
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Professor Mikl´os Farkas was born on June 15, 1932 in Budapest, Hungary. He had all his
school and higher education in Budapest. He received an M.Sc degree in Applied
Mathematics from E¨otvo¨s L´ora´nd University in 1955 and a Ph.D degree from the Hungarian
National Academy of Sciences in 1957 for his contributions to differential geometry.
Sixteen years later, the Academy of Sciences conferred D.Sc on Professor Farkas for his
thesis titled Periodic Perturbations of Autonomous Systems. Professor Farkas joined the
Department of Mathematics of the Budapest University of Technology as an Assistant
Professor in 1957 and served as a Professor in the period 1967–2002. In recognition of
his distinguished services that spanned over 45 years, the university honored Professor
Farkas by appointing him as a Professor Emeritus in 2002. He served the Mathematical
Institute until his death in 2007.
He held visiting positions at universities in Australia, Austria, Canada, Columbia,
Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela, with the visits ranging from one to two years. Besides, he
delivered lectures at various national and international scientific meetings and
conferences held in Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Egypt,
Germany, Greece, India, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, the
Netherlands, UK, Ukraine, USA, Venezuela and Vietnam. He was a member of several
leading mathematical societies in the world.
The geometric-qualitative theory of differential equations began receiving much
attention in the 1960’s, and this fascinated Professor Farkas. He had introduced the
concept of zip bifurcation in biological models (one of his most notable and significant
contributions to this subject) and this phenomenon is gaining increasing significance
in recent years. He had published more than seventy research papers in various leading
international journals and about fifty text books, monographs, edited books
including philosophical and pedagogical articles. In particular, the books Periodic Motions
(Springer, 1994) and Dynamic Models in Biology (Academic Press, 2001) have been
very popular among contemporary researchers. In 2001, he was awarded the
prestigious Albert Szent-Gy¨orgyi Prize. He was the first mathematician in Hungary to
teach structural stability, bifurcations and catastrophe theory. He had supervised
fifteen Ph.D theses and dissertations of several M.Sc students.
He was a member of the Editorial Boards of leading international journals, such as,
Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems (Springer, 2004–07), Nonlinear Analysis
– Real World Applications (Elsevier, 2003–07), Miskolc Mathematical Notes (Applied
Mathematics, Hungary) and the Electronic Journal of Qualitative Theory of
Differential Equations (Hungary).
After achieving several distinctions with an illustrious career as a leading
academician, Professor Farkas succumbed to his illness, and died on August 28, 2007. He is
survived by wife Dr. Katalin K´eri, two sons and a daughter. It is befitting to
dedicate this special issue to the memory of this distinguished mathematician, the late
Professor Mikl´os Farkas. We feel honored to be the guest editors of this special issue
and we express our sincere thanks to the management of this journal for their support.
Mikl´os, your colleagues and friends will keep
you in their memory for years to come
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