What was the path that led from Erdőszentgyörgy to the University of Bucharest, and then to Ohio? How did the talented young mathematician from Transylvania become a professor at The Ohio State University, and why did he move with his family to Budapest after a decade and a half, where a huge challenge awaited him? How did he become a school founder, how did he introduce algebraic geometry to university students here, to the point that today there is an extremely effective group working in this mathematical field at Rényi? András Némethi talks about all this in the interview, and also reveals what problems he is currently preoccupied with, or why it is a defining experience for a mathematician to give a lecture at the International Congress of Mathematics. The research professor at Rényi is one of the world's leading scientists in terms of singularity theory, and of course this topic will also be discussed in this conversation.