Professor Constantin Carathéodory, c mid-20th century

Constantin Carathéodory, born 13 September 1873, died 2 February 1950. He was a Greek mathematician, who lived most of his life in Germany. He is most famous for contributions to real and complex analysis, calculus of variations and measure theory. He further created an axiomatic formulation of thermodynamics. He is considered one of the greatest mathematicians of his era, and the greatest Greek mathematician since antiquity. He was born in Berlin to Greek parents, and grew up in Brussels. He studied engineering in Belgium at the Royal Military Academy, and later the University of Berlin in 1900. He then completed studies at the University of Göttingen in 1902, further obtaining a PhD there in 1904, and Habilitation in 1905. His doctoral advisor was Hermann Minkowski. He married his aunt Euphrosyne Carathéodory in 1909, who was eleven years younger, thus following the family tradition of marrying close relatives. They had two children together. He then went on to work at numerous academic institutions, including University of Göttingen, University of Berlin, University of Athens, and University of Munich. He was elected to Prussian Academy of Science in 1919. He retired from teaching in 1938, but continued to work for Bavarian Academy of Science. He worked with Einstein on Hamilton-Jacobi equation as part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. He proposed the creation of a new university in Greece to address the growing educational needs there, creating the University of Smyrna in 1920, where he was named Dean, but due to the War in Asia Minor, which ended with the Great Fire of Smyrna, the University never admitted students. Carathéodory managed to save books from the University library and nearly perished in the fire, if not for a last minute rescue by a journalist on a rowboat. The Greek University envisioned by Carathéodory was finally realised with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1925. He was fluent in Greek and French as his first languages, later mastering German and also fluent in English, Italian, Turkish and Latin. He died in 1950, in Munich, aged 76.