Index – Science – Biophysicist Istvan Simon passed away

Széchényi Prize-winning biophysicist Simon István, a permanent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), died on Saturday, the MTA informed MTI on Sunday.

Istvan Simon received a diploma in physics from Eötvus Lorand University in 1969. In 1975, he became Candidate of Biological Sciences, and in 1987 he became Doctor of Biological Sciences. In 2016, he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and then a full member in 2022.

Since 1969 he has worked at the Institute of Enzymology of the Natural Sciences Research Center and its legal predecessors. He was President of the Hungarian Bioinformatics Society for eight years and a member of the Board of Directors of the Hungarian Biophysical Society for decades. More recently, he had an important role in the formation of the Interdepartmental Scientific Committee on Bioinformatics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and in the establishment of ELIXIR Hungary, which links local bioinformatics research to the continent's network.

Istvan Simon's field of research was biophysics, biochemistry and bioinformatics. His narrower areas of expertise have included studying the structure and structural organization of proteins using physical, chemical, theoretical and numerical methods, as well as creating new bioinformatics algorithms for proteins, databases and web servers.

He received the Széchenyi Prize in 2024 in recognition of his successful theoretical and computational activities in the field of protein science, which have had an outstanding global impact, as well as his outstanding activity in school establishment, teaching and general science.