The First Programming and Computer Science Training in Hungary at the University Level Extended Abstract Máté Szabó Around 1955 the interests of the eminent mathematical logician László Kalmár turned towards the applications of logic to computer design and to engineering in general, automata theory, and cybernetics. He started a department seminar on these issues during the spring of 1956 at the University of Szeged, where he was professor. The result of the seminar was the construction of the (Szeged) Logical Machine and the Electronic Ladybird, a conditioned reflex model, built in cooperation with members of the Pedagogy and Psychology Department in 1957. ([2], [4]) In the same year the Cybernetics Research Group of the Hun- garian Academy of Sciences in Budapest received the blueprints and some of the parts of the Soviet M-3 computer, which became the first running electronic vacuum tube computer in the country by the end of 1958. Kalmár knew the members of the Group and thus was already aware of these plans in early 1957. As he recognized that in the near future the country would need highly educated experts in digital computer programming, his aim was to begin to develop such experts at the University of Szeged as soon as possible. During the 1950s in Hungary those who wanted to learn natural sciences or humanities had to enroll as high school teachers with double majors, with very few exceptions. That is, most people who obtained a training in math- ematics earned a mathematics-physics or a mathematics-descriptive geometry high school teacher degree through four years of coursework and about a year of practice training in a high school. The Eötvös University in Budapest offered an ‘Applied Mathematician’ major 1 which did not require training in education and psychology as the high school teacher degrees did. However, this major did not provide any kind of introduction to computers. Kalmár’s aim was to start an applied mathematics major that, similarly to the major in Budapest, stood alone and did not require the students to earn a high school teacher degree, but his attempts were declined. ([3], [5]) In May 1957 the Ministry of Education and Culture 2 permitted in a special decree that a limited number of talented students with double majors could drop their “sec- ond” major at the beginning of their third or fourth year in order to gain deeper knowledge and conduct research in their “first” major. In July 1957 Kalmár made an application to the Ministry to start such an applied mathematician track, focusing on computers (“digital calculators”) and their theory, for math- ematics majors in Szeged. It was granted by early September with an allowed 1 Still to this day in Hungary students have to declare their major at the time when they apply to a university, i.e. even before their first year. 2 Művelődésügyi Minisztérium. 1 Accepted to the 4th International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Computing 4-7 October 2017 Brno (Czech Republic)