Growing up in Hungary and Turning to Chemistry

I was born in Budapest, Hungary on May 22, 1927. My father, Gyula Olah, was a lawyer. My mother, Magda Krasznai, came from a family in the southern part of the country and fled to the capital, Bndapest, at the end of World War I, when it became part of Yugoslavia. 

I met him many years later in Los Angeles, and we reminiseed about it. 

Quite naturally, I attended many opera performances and rehearsals with neighbors and friends from early childhood on. 1 still remember a rehearsal conducted by a gentle, smallish man who became, however, a holy terror with the orchestra and the singers alike once he raised his baton. He was Arturo Toscanini. 

At the end of World War 1, Hungary lost more than half of its former territory and population in the Versailles (Trianon) treaties. At the 

Budapest between the two World Wars was a vibrant, cultnred city with excellent theaters, concert halls, opera house, and museums. The city consisted of ten districts. The working-class industrial outskirts of Pest had their row-houses, whereas the middle-class inner city had quite imposing apartment buildings. The upper classes and aristocracy lived in their villas in the hills of Buda. 

---