Was it your family background or personal interest that drew you to science?
I would rather say that my family background played a major role in shaping my individual thirst for knowledge. My parents never dismissed my questions; they always tried to answer them. My father, an electrical engineer who still enjoys tinkering, often took over the dining room with his soldering iron and all kinds of resistors, capacitors, and transistors when I was a child. Of course, this required my mother’s patience too, but I learned early on that if I understood how things worked, I could build great things from these tiny gadgets. This naturally meant that I was always curious about how things worked. This curiosity led me to become interested in mathematics, chemistry and physics.
Did you start Béla III Secondary School in Baja already determined to become a physicist, or did you consider other options too?
I attended a six-year secondary school, so if I remember correctly, I started secondary school at the age of 13. I had already had physics lessons for a year in primary school, but that wasn’t enough to make me want to become a physicist at all costs. In secondary school, I was first drawn to the world of chemistry and I even took part in competitions. I was always into maths too, but in the end, I decided on physics. I was lucky to have very good teachers in all three subjects.
Why did you choose the University of Szeged after graduating from secondary school?
When my teachers found out what I wanted to study and what I wanted to do, they unanimously recommended the University of Szeged. So much so that, on the recommendation of my physics teacher, I attended a physics club in Szeged during my final year of secondary school. I fell in love with the city and the university, and as I didn’t have to take advanced level matriculation exams due to my competition results, there was no question where I would continue my studies. Since then, of course, I have realized that my teachers were right.
You graduated as a physicist in Szeged in 2004 and obtained your PhD degree at the same university in 2008. Did you always want to be a researcher, or did this ambition develop along the way?
I wanted to understand how the world around us works. I had a naive idea of how interesting it could be to work as a physicist and use large instruments, but at that time I didn’t yet know that I wanted to do research. Later, while working on my thesis, I realized that my thirst for knowledge, my curiosity, and my relentless pursuit of understanding things would prove useful in research.
At the university, and since 2015 at our research institute, you have been studying ultrafast processes and ultrafast ellipsometry, plasmonics and nanooptics, and have been developing ellipsometric evaluation methods. What attracted you to nanoscale physics?
I first encountered the nanoworld during my thesis work, when I was studying the properties of thin films. I remember how fascinating it was to see the manifestation of macroscopic properties in layers that are a hundred times thinner than a human hair, i.e., a few tens or hundreds of nanometres thick. The most obvious examples of this are the so-called diamond-like carbon layers. Although they are very thin, they retain the hardness of diamond, which is precisely why they are used in many areas for surface hardening. For example, it is much more cost-effective to coat knives with such a thin film layer than to make the knives themselves out of diamond! Even more interesting is that if we further reduce the thickness of the thin film coating, we may discover several unexpected properties that differ from the macroscale ones. For example, if we produce nanometre-sized gold bricks, they can interact with visible light and focus it into a very small volume. This highly focused light can be used for many purposes, such as detecting the presence of a single molecule. On the one hand, it is very exciting to discover that materials behave differently at this scale than in the familiar macroscopic world. On the other hand, it is also very exciting that this behaviour opens up a wide range of applications.
Which of your achievements are you most proud of?
What I am proud of is the progress and achievements of my BSc, MSc and PhD students. Otherwise, I would rather say that I enjoy the process of discussing and reviewing the results, when we get from the “we don’t understand what we have measured” phase to the “we do understand it” point, and when we may even plan new experiments based on this understanding. But if I have to name just one result, then at the moment I am most proud of the fact that our laboratory has a device that is perhaps a record-breaker in its field. The so-called ellipsometric device we have developed allows us to examine processes taking place in semiconductors, among other things. These are processes that influence the operation of solar cells, for example. As far as I know, the temporal resolution of our setup is the best in the world. But to be honest, that’s not what I’m most appreciative of (although it’s great, of course!). It fills me with pride that we solved the problems we encountered during the development phase and moved forward as a team with my colleagues.
As a supervisor, you help BSc and MSc students obtain their degrees, and three of your students have received PhD degrees. One of the latter is your direct colleague, Zsuzsanna Pápa. You give lectures, teach calculation practicals and run lab classes at the university. One of your students described you as follows: “She was the best lab instructor I have ever had. She explains the material very well, she is helpful, and always puts the students’ interests first... Anyone who has her for labs is very lucky; you can tell that she loves teaching.” How should physics be taught effectively?
I wish I knew! I have always strived to be patient and consistent, although the student probably summed it up best: I really enjoy explaining things. It’s great to see the students’ eyes light up when they suddenly understand something that was not clear to them before. Or when those who sat down for class looking tired get involved in the task and smile as they do so. Of course, you must prepare for these classes and must not forget the steps that might have caused you problems when you were a student. What could be the point that has become trivial to me over the years, but is actually not so obvious? So perhaps we need to remain young at heart and be able to marvel at the world. I try to pass on the many things that I myself have received.
You are a researcher and a mother of two children. Have you managed to instil the love of science in your children?
It’s not game over yet, as they say, because my children are still quite young. Both are clearly interested in mathematics. They didn’t mind at all when we had pizza for lunch at home, because instead of cooking, we built a compass together. At another time, we experimented with a laser pointer and pliers. Or we “hunted” for the light from the remote control with our phones and cameras. For now, they love to marvel at the world, but that doesn’t mean they won’t choose a completely different path. If I manage to get them to the point where they dare to think for themselves and are able to do so, they will be fine, no matter where they end up.
Among the Szeged-based physicists, Gábor Laczkó, László Nánai, Béla Hopp, Miklós Erdélyi, Katalin Varjú and Tibor Ajtai were previously awarded the Budó Ágoston Prize. This year, you are the recipient of the award. This is your second important recognition in a short period of time, as last year you won the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. What do these awards mean to you?
They do reassure me that perhaps I am on the right track after all, and that it is worth going further in this direction. They convey the message that representatives of the scientific community and the domestic physics community also find the research I am engaged in and the results I have achieved interesting and valuable. Whenever we did well in our tests, my secondary school mathematics teacher would always say ‘keep it up’. So perhaps the most important message is ‘keep it up’.
Photos: Gábor Balázs