Demetrios Christodoulou
Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the ETH Zurich
Biography:Demetrios Christodoulou was born in Athens, Greece in 1951. He studied physics at Princeton Univesity and obtained his Ph.D. in 1971. He then turned to mathematics and became Professor of Mathematics, first (1985-1987) at Syracuse University in the state of New York, then at the Courant Institute of New York University (1988-1992), and in the period 1992-2001 at Princeton University, a position which he held until his move to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 2001. There he was Professor of Mathematics and Physics until 2017, and since that time he is Emeritus Professor. He has been awarded the MacArthur Fellows award in mathematics and physics in 1993, the Bocher Prize of the American Mathematical Society in 1999, the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Science in 2011, and the Henri Poincare Prize of the International Association of Mathematical Physics in 2021. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and of the Academia Europaea.
Title of Speech:The Mathematical Thought of Archimedes and Apollonius
Abstract:The mathematical tradition of Ancient Greece originates from Samos, from Pythagoras. We then had the school which he originated in South Italy, the School of the Pythagoreans. From there the torch was passed to the School of Athens, with Theaetetus and Eudoxus, and from there to the School of Alexandria, with Euclid. The mathematical tradition of Ancient Greece culminated in Archimedes and Apollonius the works of who is the subject of my talk.
Michael Lambrou
Professor at the Mathematics Department of the University of Crete
Biography:Michael Lambrou completed his B.Sc, M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees at the University of London in England. He worked as a Professor at the Mathematics Department of the University of Crete in Greece until his retirement. He has published numerous research papers in Pure Mathematics (Functional Analysis), and also does research in the History of Mathematics. He has written numerous “Notes for students” for University students studying Mathematics, has written books for school students, and an English to Greek Dictionary of Mathematical Terms. Also, he has translated several books from English into Greek and has written articles in journals and Encyclopedias explaining Mathematics to students and teachers. He has worked extensively on the dissemination of Mathematics, both at the school or University level, maintains a successful mathematical forum on the internet, and constantly delivers lectures at institutions throughout the world. The topics he covers in his lectures are Pure Mathematics, Problem Solving, the History of Mathematics and Recreational Mathematics. For many years, he was engaged in Mathematical Olympiads and is the representative in his country of the popular international Kangaroo Mathematical Competition. He has worked with mathematically gifted students and trains teachers of mathematically gifted students.
Title of Speech:The Mathematical contributions of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans from antiquity to the Arabic world, to Medieval Europe and to Renaissance times.
Abstract:The deep contributions to Mathematics by Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans is well documented. After a short introduction to these based on the sources that give as the information, we discuss the legacy of their work as it spread to the East and the West many centuries ahead, till the Renaissance times.
Athanase Papadopoulos
Directeur de Recherche at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Biography:Athanase Papadopoulos (born 1957) is Directeur de Recherche at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) working at the Institut de Recherche Mathématique Avancée (Strasbourg). His main fields of interest are geometry and topology, the history and philosophy of mathematics, and mathematics and music. He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1984–85 and 1993–94), USC (1998–1999), CUNY (Ada Peluso Professor, 2014), Brown University (Distinguished visiting professor, 2017), Tsinghua University, Beijing (2018), Lamé Chair of the State University of Saint Petersburg (2019), and has had several month visits to the Max-Plank Institute for mathematics (Bonn), the Erwin Schrödinger Institute (Vienna), the Graduate Center of CUNY (New York), the Tata Institute (Bombay), Galatasaray University (Istanbul), the University of Florence (Italy), Fudan University (Shanghai), Gakushuin University (Tokyo), Presidency University (Calcutta) and Banaras Hindu University. In 2025, he delivered a GIAN course at Jawaherlal Nehru University (Delhi). He is the author of more than 220 published articles and about 50 monographs and edited books.
Title of Speech:Pythagorean mathematics in French 20th century philosophy: The case of Simone Weil
Abstract:Simone Weil (1909-1943) is one of the greatest figures of twentieth-century French philosophy. She had a boundless admiration for ancient Greek civilization, for which she drew parallels with Babylonian and Indian cultures. Simone Weil is the sister of the mathematician André Weil (1906-1998), one of the most pre-eminent mathematicians of the modern era, who was also a noted historian of mathematics. It appears clearly from Simone and André Weil's writings and the correspondence they maintained in the few years that preceded Simone's death, that the two had a fused relationship and shared common ideas on the philosophy and history of mathematics. In this talk, I will rely on the writings of Simone Weil and her correspondence with her brother to discuss the vast role played by Pythagorean mathematics in Simone Weil's thought and philosophy. Simone Weil also had a fundamentally Christian vision of Pythagorean mathematics.
Piotr Błaszczyk
Associate Professor at the Institute of Mathematics, University of the National Education Commission, Kraków, Poland
Biography:Piotr Błaszczyk is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Mathematics, University of the National Education Commission, Kraków, Poland. His research expertise lies in the foundational aspects of geometry and calculus
Title of Speech:Pythagoras’ Theorem Through the Ages
Abstract:We discuss ancient proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem -- Chinese, Arabic, and Hind -- and compare them with Euclid’s demonstrations in Elements I.47 and VI.31.
We show how Descartes transformed the meaning of the theorem, shifting it from its ancient geometric interpretation to a modern form. We highlight the role of Pythagoras’ Theorem in the rise of calculus by examining Newton’s derivation of the curvature of a curve and Euler’s contributions to the development of trigonometry.
Finally, we explore the relevance of the theorem in modern Euclidean spaces, the foundations of 20th-century geometry, and in the architecture of 21st-century large language models.
