Konstantinos Karatheodori (September 13, 1873 – February 2, 1950)

Konstantinos Karatheodori (September 13, 1873 – February 2, 1950)

With roots from Vyssa in Eastern Thrace and from the island of Chios, Karatheodori was one of the great minds of modern times. A prominent and well respected Professor of several Universities. A world renowned Mathematician, with his scientific work extending to the fields of Physics and Archaeology.

The Karatheodori’s were one of the most prominent and well connected families in Constantinople. His father Stefanos, a lawyer, served as Ottoman ambassador to Belgium, St. Petersburg & Berlin, where Konstantinos was born.

When the Greco-Turkish war (1897) broke out, Konstantinos sided with the Greeks putting him at odds with Ottoman authorities, as his father was a representative of the Ottoman Government.

Whilst he was born, grew up in and lived in Germany, he was fluent in Greek and maintained many contacts with Greece and the Greek Academic world and was directly involved, in the reorganisation of Greek universities.

After the Greek Army assumed control of Smyrni and the region of Ionia in 1919, Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos invited Karatheodori to establish a new Greek University there.

He was appointed Dean of the University and toured Europe buying books & equipment. The university however, would never admit students due to the Asia Minor Catastrophe. Karatheodri managed to save books from the library and was rescued by the battleship Naxos. Karatheodori later taught at the Athens Polytechnic University and the Kapodistrian University also in Athens.

A new Greek University would finally materialise, with the establishment of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1925.

There is a Karatheodori Family Museum in the village of Nea Vyssa in Thrace, named after the family’s original village of Vyssa in Eastern Thrace, where many survivors of the Greek Genocide (1914-23) settled. There is also the Karatheodori Museum in Komotini also in Thrace.

Karatheodori died on this day in Munich in 1950.