Awarded Greek MIT professor says ‘happy to contribute to Greek thought’
A Greek MIT professor who won the prestigious 2018 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize in mathematics, said he was happy he was able to contribute to Greek thought through his work.
The news was announced on Wednesday at the International Conference of Mathematicians in Brazil, where Constantinos Daskalakis, a 37-year-old professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and principal investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in MIT, was awarded the prize.
“I am happy to be able to contribute to Greek thought. Greece has a lot of talent and I hope the conditions will soon be created to reduce the brain drain and our young people can create in Greece without distractions,” he reportedly told the Athens-Macedonian news agency.
“Nevanlinna is one of these awards you learn about when you are young, then you look at the list of the winners and you decide that the chances of winning it are negligent. When I learned that my work had been recognized with this tremendous distinction, I felt great honor and joy,” he added.
The prize is awarded every four years to a scientist under 40 deemed to have made a major contribution to the mathematical aspects of computer science.
Daskalakis was honored by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) for “transforming our understanding of the computational complexity of fundamental problems in markets, auctions, equilibria, and other economic structures," MIT said.
