Miklós Martin

Miklós Martin joined the Hungarian national team in 1948, winning a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics and 1954 European Championships. He defected to the United States while on a tour after the 1956 Olympics, as did many Hungarian Olympians in response to the Soviet repression of the Hungarian October Revolution. He had already earned a master’s degree in art history at the University of Budapest and enrolled at Southern Cal, playing one semester of water polo, but found the competition too far beneath his level and concentrated on his studies. He earned a B.A. degree in French, and later a Ph.D. in romance languages at Princeton, which he attended on a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship. Martin became a professor of romance languages, eventually settling at Pasadena City College. He Americanized his name and became known as Nick Martin.