Dr Árpád Lengyel was born in Pilismarót, Austria-Hungary (in modern-day Hungary) on 19 March 1886. Hailing from a Jewish family, he was the son of merchant Ede Weisz Lengyel and the former Matild Gutfreund. 

Educated at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Lengyel gained his medical degree in 1909, after which he worked in St Rókus Hospital and as an ambulance doctor. Fluent in several languages, including English, in March 1912 Lengyel took a position aboard Carpathia as ship’s doctor to tend to the third class passengers, which were composed largely of Hungarians and Austrians. 

With his first working sea voyage being largely uneventful, events took a dramatic turn in the early hours of 15 April when Carpathia responded to the distress calls of Titanic. Of the three physicians aboard Carpathia he was the most experienced when it came to paramedic work and he was instrumental in organising medical relief for the survivors of the disaster. He gave an account of his experiences tending to the passengers, published in the New York Herald on 21 April 1912.

The events of the Titanic disaster had a profound effect on Lengyel and he never went to sea again. He returned to hospital work and with the outbreak of WWI served his country as an army doctor. In the following years he worked as a hospital doctor before opening his own private practice in Budapest. In 1919 he married Margit Berger, with whom he raised a family. 

Árpád Lengyel died in Budapest on 8 September 1940 following a heart attack. Buried in Fiuemei úti Nemzeto Sírket cemetery, his headstone reads:

DR LENGYEL ÁRPÁD
1886-1940
A CARPATHIA HAJÓORVOSA
AKI A TITANIC SÚLLYEDÉSEKOR
MENTÉSI ÉS ORVOSI MUNKÁJÁVAL
KIÉRDEMELTE AZ EGÉSZ VILÁG
ELISMERÉSÉT