His name will always be associated with the Turing Award – he is, after all, the only Greek to ever have been awarded the so-called Nobel prize of computing. But Greek-French computer scientist Joseph Sifakis’ life and career are much more than that important milestone.
As a boy growing up in Crete, he imagined joining the merchant navy one day. Later, he wanted to become an archaeologist. Eventually, though, he studied electrical engineering in Greece and immigrated to France during the dictatorship. His degree from the Athens Polytechnic gave him a solid technical foundation for post-graduate studies in nuclear physics in Grenoble – but then, a month into his second degree, he fell in love.
Love at first sight
“Computing was magnetic, the kind of love affair that makes you give everything else up,” Sifakis tells Kathimerini, describing the first time he saw a computer as love at first sight. The machine had about as much “juice” as a telephone, “if not less,” and was so big that the building it was in needed to be air-conditioned.
It was 1970 when he decided to switch academic fields, and he had no idea what the new science he was pursuing on an impulse was soon to bring to the world. He didn’t even care. “I just wanted to learn all about this fascinating thing; that impulse turned out well for me,” he says.
