Joseph Nagyvary is professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M University. He studied chemistry in his native Hungary at the University of Budapest and was a participant in the 1956 student uprising.
Nagyvary later escaped to Austria and ended up in Switzerland. He earned his doctorate at the University of Zurich and completed his postdoctoral work at Cambridge University. After Cambridge, Nagyvary immigrated to the United States in 1964. He taught biochemistry at Texas A&M University from 1968 to 2003. He won a prize from the Swiss National Foundation in 1962, a career development award from US Public Health in 1967, and the Gold Medal of the Japanese Society for Industrial Physics in 2005.
Nagyvary has received international recognition for his research into the Stradivarius violin, inspired by a childhood passion for classical music. Nagyvary lives in Jonestown, Texas, with his wife, Mary Ann. He has four children.