László Székelyhidi was born in 1977 in Debrecen, Hungary, the son of a mathematician and a mathematician. When choosing a career, he initially wavered between his two great passions, music and mathematics. He decided on the latter and studied mathematics at Oxford University. He wrote his dissertation at the Leipzig MPI for Mathematics in the Sciences, and received his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 2004. Research stays took him to Princeton, again to the Leipzig MPI and to ETH Zurich. In 2007, he followed a call to the University of Bonn, but returned to Leipzig in 2011. Since then he has been teaching and researching as Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Leipzig. László Székelyhidi has received numerous honours and awards, including a Starting Grant and a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council. He is a recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences.