The Nobel Prizes won earlier this month by Hungarian scientists Katalin Karikó and Ferenc Krausz are a ‘great honour’ for Hungary, President Katalin Novák said in an interview with local news site feol.hu on Monday following her visit to Fejér County.
‘Let us celebrate together that two exceptional Hungarians have achieved such major recognition to the greatest joy and pride of the entire nation,’ Novák said. One Nobel laureate is already something to be immensely proud of, ‘but to have two at the same time is an outright miracle’, the President stated. The residents of central Hungary’s Fejér County can be especially proud about having given the nation a Nobel laureate in the person of physicist Ferenc Krausz, she added.
Karikó and Krausz are Hungarians with a Hungarian mindset ‘who have reached the top of the world and the Nobel Prize having come from the Hungarian education system’, Novák said, adding that the two scientists have ‘saved the lives of millions with the findings of their research’. Novák said she had met Krausz’s parents during her visit to the county, and had been able to ‘look the non-intellectual, hardworking and honest parents in the eye and thank them on behalf of all Hungarians’. She then paid a visit to the primary school where Krausz had ‘started out on his journey to the Nobel Prize’.
The success these two scientists have achieved is further proof that Hungary had and still has excellent teachers,
Novák said.
‘There’s no question that we must create the conditions for both the moral and financial appreciation of teachers,’ she stressed, adding that ‘we’re not doing well there’. The example of the Nobel laureates demonstrates clearly the solid foundation provided by Hungarian education that allows students to hold their own amid the fiercest competition anywhere in the world, the president said.
Concerning the family-friendly Hungary strategy, Novák said all three components of the God-Country-Family triad ‘are subject to many attacks’, even though families are the most natural communities that ‘guarantee of our security’. She said that as President, she considered the representation of families a priority, and reiterated that the state’s aim was to remove the financial obstacles that may prevent people from having children. Novák remarked that as a woman and a mother she considered it important for women to have a true freedom of choice and not be forced to choose between having a family and a career. Strengthening families is not a task that is exclusive to Hungary, although Hungary is seen from abroad as a country to learn from when it comes to demographic issues, the President said, noting the host of international speakers and participants at last month’s Budapest Demographic Summit.
Novák welcomed the fact that the ‘family-friendly alliance’ was gathering more and more international members, saying that more and more people were recognizing that unless something was done to overcome the ‘demographic winter’, Western civilisation in its current form ‘could completely disappear’. The President noted her recent announcement of the establishment of a demographic roundtable to enhance dialogue on demographic issues and their solutions.
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Sources: Hungarian Conservative/MTI
