Hungary information
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It has a population of 9.7 million, with 90% ethnic Hungarians. Hungarian is the official language and Budapest is the country's capital and largest city. The country has a temperate seasonal climate, with generally warm summers and cold winters. Temperature extremes are 41.9 °C (107.4 °F) on 20 July 2007 in the summer and −35 °C (−31.0 °F) on 16 February 1940 in the winter.
The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar ('Hungarian') and ország ('country'). The name "Magyar" refers to the people of the country, more accurately reflects the name of the country. The word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri.
Hungarian is the official and predominant spoken language with around 13 million native speakers in Europe. It is a member of the Uralic language family, unrelated to any neighbouring language and distantly related to Finnish and Estonian. During its history, Hungarian came into contact with a variety of speech communities, wich resulted in significant layers of Iranian, Turkic, Slavik and German loanwords in the languague. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, which dates to the 1190s. Contemporary Hungarians can still understand these early texts.
The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I. The country became a Western-styled Christian (Roman Catholic) state, with Latin script replacing Hungarian runes. Although contemporary Hungary has no official religion and recognises freedom of religion as a fundamental right, the constitution "recognises Christianity's nation-building role" in its preamble. During its more than 1000 years of existence Hungary has experienced every possible historical ups and downs. It was several times invaded by different empires, occupied neighbouring areas, suffered several subdivisions, won battles and campaigns, lost world wars, survived civil wars and fallen revolutions.
Hungary's achievements in science and technology have been significant, and research and development efforts form an integral part of the country's economy. Hungary ranks 32nd among the most innovative countries in the Bloomberg Innovation Index. Hungary has been the home of some of the most prominent researchers in various scientific disciplines, notably physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering. As of 2024, fifteen Hungarian scientists have been recipients of a Nobel Prize. Famous Hungarian mathematicians include father Farkas Bolyai and son János Bolyai, who were the founders of non-Euclidean geometry; and John von Neumann, a key contributor in the fields of quantum mechanics and game theory, a pioneer of digital computing, and the chief mathematician in the Manhattan Project. Notable Hungarian inventions include the lead dioxide match (János Irinyi), a type of carburetor (Donát Bánki, János Csonka), the electric (AC) train engine and generator (Kálmán Kandó), holography (Dennis Gabor), the Kalman filter (Rudolf E. Kálmán), and Rubik's Cube (Ernő Rubik).