Numerus Clausus Led to Hungarian Exodus in 1920s
DOI: 10.1063/1.4796753
I disagree with Maria Ronay and Hans Bethe about whether Edward Teller was forced to leave Hungary in 1926. After World War I, Hungary was vastly more repressive of Jews than Germany was. In 1920, the Numerus Clausus Act was passed, which limited the number of Jews who could attend higher education to their proportion of the population. Because Jews at that time comprised an extremely disproportionate percentage of the educated population, the competition for “Jewish” entrance positions at Hungarian universities was stiff. The percentage of Jewish students dropped from a prewar level of about 30% to 5%. Most Hungarian Jews who pursued a higher education were forced to go elsewhere, Teller included.
More about the authors
Brian Sutin, (sutin@ociw.edu) The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Pasadena, California, US .
