The Reorganisation of the Universities of Athens and Istanbul in the 1930s - Two One-Man Projects and a Historical Coincidence

Abstract

Directly after the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 by which the gained territories added some 70 % to the Greek land area and her population was almost doubled, two Greek reputable scientists, the mathematician Constantin Carathéodory (1873-1950), professor at the Technical University of Breslau, and his brother-in-law, the jurist Georg von Streit, Greece's Minister of Foreign Affairs, proposed the foundation of a second Greek university in the capital of Macedonia to the Greek Liberal government (1910-1915). Carathéodory had even written down a comprehensive programme regulating the operation of the university under consideration. That plan, however, failed to materialise due to World War I.