Your Excellency, Mr. President,
Honourable Ministers,
Honourable Members of Parliament,
Honourable Ambassadors,
Distinguished Guests,

I welcome you all to the 7th annual award ceremony of our Foundation, in the presence of the President of the Republic, for which we are deeply honoured.

Despite his busy schedule and the great challenges he is facing every day, the President has found the time to attend this ceremony, which shows how much importance he attaches to Science, Culture and the Arts, and this gives us even more encouragement to go forward in our work.

Mr. President, we offer you our deepest thanks for this.

As you are aware, tonight we are presenting an award in the field of Mathematics. Demetrios Christodoulou is considered one of the leading Mathematicians in the world. He has received a number of awards including the most significant international honours in his speciality.

The Chairman of the Selection Committee, Professor Athanasios Fokas, of the University of Cambridge, says that “Demetris Christodoulou is clearly in a class of his own”. In other words, he is something special.

Another leading scientist said of Mr. Christodoulou: “Thank God that the Greeks have returned to Mathematics after 2,300 years”; what he meant, of course, is 2,300 years after Archimedes.

This year, for the first time in the history of the Foundation, something happened which surprised and moved us. A number of the ten candidates, once we announced the verdict of the Selection Committee, wrote to us and said that they, if they had been judges, would have selected Demetrios Christodoulou! This, I believe, says it all.

Now please permit me to say a few words about the person we are honouring tonight. From an early age Demetrios Christodoulou had a burning interest in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. At the age of fourteen he began studying Euclidean Geometry and was influenced by a documentary on Einstein. In the following couple of years he became fascinated with Einstein’s theory of relativity and with the concepts of space and time, concepts which are perhaps difficult for most of us to understand.

The work of Demetrios Christodoulou was brought to the attention of leading Professors in the field of physics, and as a result, at the beginning of 1968, the then 17-year-old Demetrios was admitted as a post-graduate student to Princeton University in the United States, without having previously attended any undergraduate course. Within two years, one month before his 19th birthday, he published his first scientific paper which brought him his first doctorate.

In 1977 his scientific outlook was radically transformed, as a researcher now, at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. It was then that his mathematical talent was recognised by his associates and colleagues and he was granted special leave, with pay, to go to Paris and study Mathematics for five years, from 1977 to 1981. This helped him to find his true calling, the development of Mathematics in the solution of Physical problems.

Demetrios Christodoulou returned to the United States in 1981 and worked methodically for five continuous years, cooperating internationally with renowned Mathematicians, from a number of countries to build a shining career in Mathematics. Today, Demetrios Christodoulou is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the ETH in Zurich. In a little while Professor Marios Mavronicolas will tell us more about his career.

I shall close this address with heartfelt thanks, from Louki and me, to the staff at the Presidential Palace for the huge assistance they always give us, in organising this event.

Deepest thanks also go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our Ambassadors all over the world who become Ambassadors for our Award when they offer their boundless assistance to create international awareness of our work, distributing our posters, and in announcing the Award.

We would also like to thank Display Art, and particularly Andis Partzilis, for all the enthusiastic efforts that they have put into preparing and improving the background for this ceremony.

Finally, I wish to thank you all for your presence tonight.

TN/MA
3.10.2016