Czvikovszky, Tibor

chemical engineer

Mr. Czvikovszky was born in 1936, and in 1960 he received a degree with distinction at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Technical University of Budapest (BME). In 1966, he became a doctor of plastic technology there. His interest in both the chemistry of polymers and foreign languages was strengthened by a scholarship to the German Democratic Republic in 1963. (Since then, he has learnt six European languages, successfully obtaining the relevant certificates too.) In 1968, he studied and conducted research at the University of Paris, under the supervision of the late representatives of the Curie schools. In the same year, he completed a major study and patented invention in the joint systems of wood and synthetic polymers, resulting in about a hundred appreciative references in the relevant scientific literature. Due to this, he was invited to South America to participate in the preservation effort of tropical trees: he spent more than three years in Venezuela (1971-74), and later in Mexico, Ecuador, and other countries. After holding several jobs in the Plastic Research Institute in Budapest, he was appointed head of the plastic technology department there, and contributed to the development of more than forty inventions patented in several countries between 1982 and 1988 in relation with the production and industrial application of modern plastics, oligomers, and composites. In 1988 he was invited to Canada to witness the launch of one of his patented inventions. He was hired by the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Technical University of Budapest [BME] in 1992, and converted the old-fashioned Textile Technology Department into the Polymer Technology Department that has become one of the best-equipped workshops of polymer research and technology in the country. He is very proud of his seven grandchildren, and his son who has also become a head of a department at a university.

"Green" Plastic?