BACKSTAGE: A WONDERFUL PERSON – CONSTANTINOS KARATHEODORI

Constantinos Karatheodori, one of the leading mathematicians of the 20th century, was born in 1873 in Berlin, where his father Stefanos served as a diplomatic employee of the Ottoman Empire. In 1875, the Sublime Porte appointed his father ambassador to Belgium. Young Constantinos grew up and studied in Brussells, in a generous, open and culturally rich familial environment. The Karatheodori family, which traced its origin to Vosnochori, Adrianopol (modern-day Edirne, Turkey), dated back to the mid-1700s and gave the social, political and cultural life of that era great scientists, diplomats, scholars, professors, etc. Karatheodori is well known for his contribution to the founding, by the Venizelos government, of the University of Smyrna in 1920 and for the preparation of a study, in 1930, regarding the re-organization of Greek universities. Among those talking about the life and work of Karatheodori, are his daughter Despina Rodopoulou, the mathematician and his biographer Evangelos Spandagos, the physicist and university professor Chryssoleon Symeonidis and the mathematics student Marina Danezi.