A great article. One of the prime examples of the disdain that mainstream mathematicians had for "Hungarian" style mathematics is the fact that Szemeredi did not get the Fields medal (apparently Erdos was very angry at this), despite the fact that a lot of deep mathematics, at least two Fields medals (Gowers and Tao), a Wolf prize (Furstenberg) have later resulted from Szemeredi's work.
After the wider acceptance of combinatorics, Szemeredi was awarded the Abel Prize.
Another area of mathematics generally ignored by mathematicans is mathematical logic. I've often heard an opinion is that it is not really "relevant" to general mathematical practice.
There's an age limit on the Fields medal (40), so it's quite common for the importance of someone's work to be recognized too late for them to be eligible. This is somewhat intentional as the medal is meant to be given to mathematicians early enough in their careers to have an impact (c.f. Nobel prizes, which are typically only awarded when someone is famous enough that getting a Nobel prize hardly matters).
Sure. But this was not the case with Szemeredi's work. It was recognised as great immediately, and Szemeredi was below 40 at the time. The problem was that his combinatorial approach was not considered to be deep enough to merit the medal.
After the wider acceptance of combinatorics, Szemeredi was awarded the Abel Prize.
Another area of mathematics generally ignored by mathematicans is mathematical logic. I've often heard an opinion is that it is not really "relevant" to general mathematical practice.