He graduated in 1903 from the secondary school Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium where he was a student of László Rátz.

He started his university studies in Budapest, later moving on to Göttingen reading mathematics and sciences.

Among the many famous professors he was taught by, he could count Loránd Eötvös, József Kürschák, Constantin Carathéodory, David Hilbert, Felix Christian Klein and Ernst Zermelo.

In 1912, the Franz Joseph University in Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca in Romania) invited him along with Gyula Farkas and Frigyes Riesz to join as faculty, and he became the professor of 'Quatitics'.

After the Treaty of Trianon, which ceded Transylvania to Romania, the university had to move to Szeged, the closest city within the new boundaries, where he with Riesz established the Centre of Mathematics, and the first internationally recognised Hungarian mathematical journal, the Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum.