Left: Arriving at school infrastructure inauguration as Secretary General of the
Ministry of Education & Religion;
Middle: Surrounded by teachers & local consultants, inspecting the school's
amphitheater;
Right: Leaving the school amidst students, consultants & teachers (news: 18/12/1972).
My father was a very strange intellectual phenomenon, whose magnitude cannot be
described except in meager terms and with lots of caution, because any valuation, even
by his son, remains subjective, being prone to erroneous judgements by a necessarily
lesser intelligence.
He was born in 1929 - approximately a month after Black Thursday. As a child he graduated first in his high school
(Pireus 3-rd Gymnasium) with a grade of 19+7/11. Under the Greek National
Examination System in 1947 he subsequently entered the Civil Engineering department
of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) after high school, ranking
seventh in the entire country[1].
Asking my uncle who took part in the same exams during the year 1945, the total
number of candidates were ~800 for the school of Civil Engineering at NTUA and
approximating the scores of the exam for year 1947 using a normal distribution with σ=15, we get using Maple:
> p:=(x,sigma,mu)->exp(-(x-mu)^2/(2*sigma^2));#normal distribution
Assuming that the number of total candidates for this school didn't vary very much
between 1945 and 1948, we note that the sample space (800) should approximately equal
the integral of the distribution, so we can normalize as follows:
> A:=evalf(solve(A*Int(p(x,15,100),x=0..200)=800,A));#find normalization constant
for sample of 800
> P:=(x,sigma,mu)->A*p(x,sigma,mu);#normalized distribution for Greek National
exams for NTUA civil engineering for year 1947
> with(plots):
> plot(P(iq,15,100),iq=0..200);
Normal distribution of IQ's corresponding to exam results in 1947
A rank of 7-th in 800 then, corresponds to an IQ of:
My mother's own testimony was that when she was dating him during his university
years, his fellow students referred to him as "Einstein".
During the period 1952-1955 he served initially as Assistant and later as Reservist
Ensign Mechanical Engineer in the Naval Command of Crete and in the General Naval
Staff, in N.A.T.O.'s Office of Research and Supervision Infrastructure.
From the year 1955 and upon his lawful dismissal from the Navy, he served until 1959
as a contractor Mechanical Supervisor of N.A.T.O.'s Construction Research
department.
Resigning in 1959, he cooperated with the Civil Construction Company "Eupalinos"
until the year 1961, when he left and founded his own construction company which he
kept until 1967.
During the period 1959-1961 he served as a Supervisor Civil Engineer in the
department of "Structural Mechanics and Elements of Technical Constructions" and during
the period 1966-1967 he served as a Supervisor Civil Engineer in the department of
"Statics and Iron Bridges" under NTUA professor E. Panayiotounakos.
In 1967 he submitted his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering and Applied Mathematics in the
area of the Mathematical Theory of Elasticity at NTUA[17]. His thesis was of fundamental importance to
the later development of the Theory of Elasticity using Complex Variables and can be
used to explain a plethora of phenomena, like Lightning[3].
Subsequently he was appointed a full-fledged professor at NTUA, and at approximately
the same time he was appointed by the (then) National Government to the position of
Secretary General in the Ministry of Education and Religion[4].
Inspecting patents of newly invented engineering machinery as Secretary General for
the Ministry of Education & Religion, in 1969.
While serving in the above governmental position he helped a plethora of people
(including friend and foe) by performing several favors after being bombarded by the
corresponding requests and he never used his position of power for personal or
financial gain, as a result of which his property remained exactly the same after this
government was deposed, in 1974[4].
Besides being an engineer, he was a very strong chess player[5], an superb player of keyboard music[6], an expert painter, an expert poet[7], an expert butterfly stroke swimmer[8], an expert hunter[9] and a fully informed amateur
astronomer[10]. He commanded expertly
several difficult areas in Mathematics, such as Geometry, Analytic Geometry, Complex Analysis, Real Analysis, Number Theory, Set Theory and Group Theory and spoke fluently several languages, such as
German, French, Italian and English, besides his native Greek[11].
In 1973-74 he left Greece and became a permanent citizen of Switzerland, living
there with his second wife until the time of his death.
Although he separated with my mother in 1972 and left our family, according to her
testimony again, while we were together he was a perfect husband and a fairly good
father to me, until he divorced my mother. She always remarks that when they were
together he never boasted about his intelligence[12].
I was told that he died in 1986 of a heart attack, but I never saw him dead, because
I was a student in the States, so I didn't make it to his funeral. The year he died was
the year of Halley's comet. Several major disasters occurred just before his
death: The Challenger disaster in the US five months before the date of his
death and the Chernobyl disaster in Russia two months before the date of his
death. At the time of his death, I was a senior at U of I, close to getting my
degree in Mathematics[13]. After being notified of his death, I lost
20 kilos, became delusional and had a bout with paranoia and depression which
overall took me 20 years to overcome. I barely made it to graduation. One year after
his death Black Monday occured.
Prior to his death, he created such a complex will, a team of lawyers was unable to
solve the grand puzzle he specified in his will for 23 years, until I figured out that
it was unsolvable as it was meant to completely deadlock the inheritance to me (and
possibly to his second wife)[14].
I found this spectroscope in his belongings
after he died. Several years before his death I had asked him for a high quality
spectroscope to do my physics investigations.
He also managed to enter the internet records without any effort on my part although
he never used computers himself[15].
My father was a genius of such monstrous magnitude, to the point where just
being the son of such a man creates severe psychological and emotional problems,
particularly after his son (this author) has been an almost complete financial failure
(compared to him of course).
As far as I am aware, he was the only human who managed to climb the ladder of
social power so fast. I am not aware of any other human being who, at the age of 35-38
had achieved so much in one's life.
His existence on this planet was, for lack of better wording, a monumental and
strange contradiction. A lesser intelligence (such as mine) cannot fully comprehend the
repercussions from the coming and passing of a genius of the caliber of my father, so
his existence and its influence on me will remain an unresolvable and mysterious grand
dilemma.
When my father was alive, the world was an infinite playground. After he died, the
world transformed into the worst nightmare imaginable.
How do I feel today? There's only one worthwhile reward for any male,
including this author: For your father to say one day: "I am proud of you. You have
done well". But no matter how much work I do, there's no way I can ever
be like my father, so I don't expect this reward to come anytime soon[16].
Notes/References
According to a surviving CV document of his.
At the age of 18! Research on the IQ's variability through
time suggests an average increase of (at least) about 3 points per decade, up to
middle age (~60). At the time of his death therefore at 56, it'd be closer to
something like 147.
The crack that develops on the Hilbert Kernel under strain or
stress has a Lichtenberg multi-linear fractal profil.
Even though he was politically neutral when appointed to
this position in 1968, he was severely anti-communist, so naturally, subsequent
communist propaganda found a way to blame him for it:
In this and this documents (where they don't even spell his name right),
some neo-communist revolutionary advocate cites him as an example of 'persecution' in public education, because of his firing of a public kindergarten teacher. Apparently his explanation for the firing ("the teacher does not possess the required ethos for the job", i.e., being a prior organized member of ELAS, a communist revolutionary organization, reponsible for the Greek civil war Genocide, mass-murdering thousands of innocent civilians, by throwing them into pits and abducting children to be indoctrinated and sent to countries of the Eastern block) doesn't satisfy the author's moral standards, who would probably rather prefer kindergarten children be indoctrinated with communist propaganda by age 6. Such is the excellence of communism, of course.
In this graduate study, his simultaneous appointment as
full-fledged professor at NTUA is seen as 'highly suspicious' (and is
therefore condemned) by a neo-communist organization. While the appointment to
the position of Secretary General of the Ministry of Education and Religion
was personally recommended by the head of the government (who knew him by
name), his simultaneous appointment at NTUA as professor had nothing to do
with the government and was incidental - based only on the quality & merit
of his work there (the quality of his Ph.D. and his published work,
notwithstanding).
The communist Athens Polytechnic student uprising in 1973 caused him to lose
both jobs, of course: As Secretary General because the government fell so he was naturally replaced and as
professor because he happened to be implicitly associated with the government
through the previous appointment (One of the reasons - among others, he left
Greece and moved to Switzerland). It's worthy to note that up to 1974 the
school he was appointed professor at while in the government (NTUA), was ranking among the top 50 schools in the world.
Today, it ranks only among the top 800. Tells you something about what communist interference after 1974 in
public schools & Universities has done to the modern Greek educational
system.
With an approximate ELO rating of 2,100-2,200 points according
to his own testimony from one of his surviving letters to me.
A much better keyboard player than I was or will ever
be even after intensive piano studies.
Having read some of his poems to my mother, when he was dating
her.
Having seen him swim when we were vacationing when I was a
kid.
Him hunting often partriges on the mountains of Greece with
his friend Panagiotis Prokopiou.
In one of our discussions when I was 16 (~1980), he told me
for the first time that stars always look like pin-point images, no matter what
the magnification. This fact remained true, until recently when very large
telescopes were able to resolve big supergiant stars, such as Betelgeuse.
I now understand why he always wore a Rolex (only the
excellent) and a 24-karat gold ring with an amethyst stone which had etched on it
the face of a little child[21].
The impact he had on my mother's life was such that my mother
chose to not even think of dating anyone else after her divorce with him,
until this day.
In one of his letters to me (dated 1984), he presented the
problem of finding all solutions to the equation ab=ba,
which is of fundamental importance to tetration
research, the area I later published in, having completely forgotten about his
letter.
He deadlocked his inheritance to me intentionally, by
transferring his own financial debts for his second wife to me(!) by declaring me financially responsible
for them (i.e. I had to counter pay her to absolve his debt to her using my legal
share of the inheritance), using a loophole in Greek Law: An inheritor does not
only inherit money and property, but debts as well. As a result, I've been engaged
in legal battles over my part of the inheritance against his second wife for 34
years and still haven't got a penny from any of his property. Any average
intelligence parent would first care about one's own offspring (financial)
survival and then about other obligations - including debts to other
people. That's a pretty bad and low-level intelligence parenting mistake, excused
only vis-a-vis some sort of intellectual or psychological derangement or possibly
financial blackmail by his second wife. So in retrospect, he proved to be
not as intelligent as I thought he was, even falling as emotional prey to a
totally inappropriate person[19]
for his intelligence's caliber. With this mistake - including his entire emotional
association with the previous person, he just left a legacy of just another fairly
incompetent to average father figure.
Google scholar reports his Ph.D. as cited. Another citation is given here and yet another here[22].
He also published several articles in the area of Theoretical Elasticity in the
Greek Engineering journal Techincal Chronicles, for example (in Greek[18]):
I was very lucky in the sense that the workload record
left by my father in Mathematics was reasonably manageable, so I was at least able
to do some comparable work there. Details on this article.
The original document has been digitized by the University of California[20] and is available for reading at the
National Library of Greece. A translation of this document in
English can be read at Research Gate. He was awarded the title of Doctor of Civil Engineering by NTUA in
1968.
If you happen to be interested in English translations of
these contact me.
A person that proved to be ultimately detrimental for his
physical health in 1986, after kicking him out of their relationship and living
place - instead of protecting him financially after his tremendous financial
strain - being a perpetual outcast of Greece's financial workspace and
workplace[4], with a divorce
specifically designed and forced by blackmail in exchange for his entire
real estate property - including my legal inheritance share. A person who
eventually sold most of his prior common belongings with my mother's previous
household, including expensive paintings and cash property shares from real estate
sale deals completed just before his death date and copyright holdings for some of
his prior work. A person of doubtful mental health and moral character - through a
troubled relationship with her own parents (even by admission of this Metropolitan to my mother), also likely involved in many
earlier suspicious activities related to dubious beliefs (after her own admission(!) on an arranged
meeting date in 1986 after his death) and with a later history of suspicious
financial connections and dealings with people in positions of power, in exchange for 'services'
provided, at one time or another, after the death of my father.
Probably illegally, since it's now freely available at the
National Library of Greece. Am in the process of finding out how it was gained
access to by both Google and U of C, as we speak.
The current posessor of both objects is the person mentioned
above[19]. That person's
sarcastic and pretentious words after a phonecall in 1998: "When are you going to
finally assume your responsibilities, so I can give you his watch and ring, to
start...?"[sic]. This, after not bulging in to her requests for willful
resignation from my legal share of the inheritance, in which case she'd be able to
legally grab even my pants, under the will's provisons.
Where the authors at the dept. where my father was previously
appointed full professor in 1968) take advantage of his absence and BOTH
undervalue his results ("...Savin[5], Milne-Thomson [6] and Galidakis[7] have
considered special cases..." and "More "general cases" of
the same problem have been considered by Sih and Liebowitz[11] and Ioakimidis[12]
(quoting himself for a "more general" method than that used by my father(!?)),
while the "most general"[sic] case has been recently studied by Krenk[13]...".
Ok.) AND use a slight variant of his method by using Cauchy integrals for solving
the problem of the simple crack. Even their symbolism is almost identical to his
thesis'. Here's a clue to the authors: His thesis does not consider any "special"
cases. Only 3 PARTICULAR cases ("First Fundamental Problem" For the Three Basic
Charge Cases), applied AFTER his GENERAL solution found on section A, for the
GENERAL anisotropy case for the problem of the simple crack on an infinite
anisotropic medium - as indicated by the quotes on the corresponding word, which
you very conveniently omit in your references so his solution is THE most general,
as it covers ALL cases, including yours. I.e., the"most general" method is my
father's. You should have also checked your solutions against my father's general
solution before publishing a claim for a "more general" solution method, quoting
yourself in the references. Too bad my father didn't have access to this journal
or computers after 1976, so he didn't sue both your *sses for both blatant
plagiarism and attempted devaluation of the results of his thesis. Not to mention
that they grabbed the opportunity to show off the implicit connection of this
problem to the Riemann-Hilbert problem ("...One easier way of treating the problem
of a straight crack in an infinite anisotropic medium is by reducing it to a
Riemann-Hilbert problem along the crack through the use of the method of complex
potentials in a way analogous to that used by Muskhelishvili [9] for the case of
an isotropic medium..." - quoting the exact same reference(!) my father
references in his thesis and using similar Cauchy integrals for his potential
functions(!)) Here's a second more subtle clue to the authors: That's
exactly the method my father uses in his thesis to solve for the
GENERALIZED (again) anisotropy case, by using the Muskhelishvili transformation,
geniuses.... Otherwise and in other news, this person made a fortune "specializing" on this problem -
with hundreds of publications on the subject and is now a respectable
Professor Emeritus somewhere. God only knows how much theory and method he's
plagiarized and used from my father's Ph.D. thesis.
