He was the head of the Flame Research Section, Explosives and Physical Science Division, Bureau of Mines, Pittsburgh, PA.
His father, Adolf Karlovitz, was a pharmacist, and his mother, Ilona Hanauer, was the daughter of the local ironmonger.
There was no electric engineering education in Hungary at this time, therefore he subsequently continued his studies at the ETH Zurich.
Béla Karlovitz and his coworker Dénes Halász developed a method that was based on the principle of magnetohydrodynamic generation and which was expected to give 50% higher efficiency compared to the contemporary electricity generation methods using heat engines.
Béla Karlovitz was unable to exploit his invention in Hungary due to the lack of funding.
The Mayor of Budapest recognized the revolutionary potential of MHD generation and guaranteed Béla Karlovitz a fully-paid leave for one year to elaborate the concept.
In 1938, Béla Karlovitz from Hungary approached the German Siemens company with a request to develop an MHD generator using combustion gases.
He arrived at the Westinghouse research facility in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with colleague Dénes Halász in 1938, and the company provided them US$500,000 to realize their concept.
[2][3] His family intended to follow him in the subsequent year, but World War II broke out, and they could unite only in 1946.
From 1953, he was working with the Combustion and Explosive Research, Inc. His name appears on two, less-cited patents from his later career stage.
[7] Béla Karlovitz pursued a scientific career even after his retirement, up to his death at 99 on the leap day of 2004.
In the 1970s, the research was continued since this technology seemed to offer superior efficiency for conventional coal-fired thermal power plants.
However, the first practical working propulsion device was not built until 1992, which was the Yamato 1 ship by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
In the 1990s, Mitsubishi built several further prototype ships propelled by MHD systems, but their maximum speed was only 8 kn (15 km/h), therefore the development of this technology was abandoned.