Alex Tarics competed for Hungary in water polo at the 1936 Olympics, helping his team to a gold medal. He played on the national team through 1939, once scoring seven goals to help Hungary defeat Germany at the Universiade, which made him a national hero. In 1948 he moved to the United States to teach engineering, moving to the Bay Area in California. There he became a professor as an architectural engineer, and an earthquake specialist, helping develop a revolutionary method of implementing seismic “base isolation” shock absorbers under large buildings, which was used on the city halls of both San Francisco and Oakland. He died in 2016 as the eldest living Olympic Champion.
Hungary