19 - The Maths Teacher

The classical physics we were taught at school in the ‘bundle’ of subjects in science, like Chemistry and Biology, were relatively easy to walk through. Some basic intelligence and plenty of memorization, of the rote learning kind, almost guaranteed good grades in the university entry exams. Enlightenment from new knowledge and erudition in one of the more interesting modern fields in science would have to wait for admission to a decent university school. Therefore, the physics into which Father tried discreetly to introduce me took back seat in my studies for the exams, while mathematics, being at the core of the ‘positive’ sciences or rather engineering I was aspiring to study and, for that matter, the most challenging for the majority of the candidates, was brough under the spotlight -and rightly so. The maths questions and problems in our school textbooks the brain was called upon to deal with, some of which admittedly cumbersome, I did manage to grapple with, mostly thanks to tenacity and perseverence than genius. That embarrassing episode of one Saturday evening, with the problem I was presented with by Mr. N, our family friend, before going out with my parents, a problem, which, as I was told, Billy, his son, of the same age as me managed to solve with ease (as Mr. N told me, presumably either to put untoward pressure on me or brag about Billy’s brilliance or both) and I did not manage to answer after wrestling for an hour for a solution and had to abandon it unsolved before going to bed (naturally to the detriment of my self-confidence and the disappointment of my parents), that episode had long been forgotten.

The late mathematician of my last and most creative and knowledge-absorptive phase of late adolescence, Theodoros Kazantzis or ‘Roulis’ -for Father, friends and colleagues, in whose tutoring school I was enrolled free of charge, an honour bestowed from Roulis –due to my good performance and grades at school, and an above average intellectual ability (as I was embarrassingly touted outside our family circle by Father), and his previous acquaintance from their student days in the 1950s, Kazantzis, more than any other teacher, became an inspiration and gave me a direction at a critical junction in life. Famous theorems and the elegance of their proofs by mathematicians whose names filled Kazantzis’ mouth and opened his eyes wide in awe, each time he mentioned them with pomp, glorious names of his trade like Fermat’s, Kolmogorov’s, Leibnitz’s, Poincare’s et al. turned my aspirations and ambitions and a short-lived youthful devotion to mathematics instead, away from early literary explorations. The latter were considered by many in Greece shallow in terms of the depth of thought expended and lacking the wealth of mental permutation and combinations· for literature and language, Father and the broad wrinkled brows of mathematical intellects, saw them as something easy for the brain to grasp and deal with, as a more trivial and prosaic, but less abstract, formal and concrete way to communicate thought and ideas than that of mathematical symbols -the language of logic and reason. Whether this direction proved a posteriori right or wrong a posteriori does not matter. After all, it is pointless such choices to be the object of retrospective reflection, and any conclusions drawn such introspection is immaterial at later stages of life.

Kazantzis was an admirable personality, unforgettable by those who had the opportunity to be guided by him in maths, a bright star that illuminated for two, otherwise dim, years my journey along the never-ending path of intellectual development. He would influence and inspire any young person who might have displayed an interest in maths, provided he or she possessed sufficient intelligence and comprehension of them. Sadly, for the mass of students who attended those tutoring schools, such a thing, that special mathematical inclination and intelligence, let alone a talent in maths, Kazantzis was looking for (beside their tuition fees), were lacking. Widespread private tutoring, in ad hoc schools or, for the wealthy, at home, paper over the cracks of a deficient public educational system private was born out and flourished out of deep-rooted social issues and the economic reality in Greece and is persistent and still in high demand by students, whilst they are subjected to the stress and the incessant pressure by their families for a university place. In short, those schools offer to their students the crutches to walk through ominous university entry exams, success in which is deemed crucial (as they are told) for their future lives and well-being.

As a major attraction for a unique ability communicate complex concepts and magnetize his audience, but also being the owner and boss and absolute ruler in his school, Kazantzis entered and left the classrooms at will, without any regards to an agreed timetable, which he himself probably had drawn up at the beginning of the year, tailor-made to his personal needs, and subscribed to. Most of the time he did not show-up to deliver his lecture, without prior notice and to the dismay of his students waiting for him, like beggars stretching their hands for alms. My school mate Yiannis D, who had been influenced by the more than average inclination and good performance in maths I had shown, after some non sequitur reasoning regarding the choice of tutoring he decided to join me to Kazantzis’ school. Each time he did not turn up to the expectant class, Yiannis protested, complaining about the tuition fees he had already paid with an unfulfilled demand of being taught personally by him, given his transmissibility and communicative abilities. He somehow believed Kazantzis possessed the magic wand that would implant mathematical analytical thinking in a (put mildly) mediocre brain. Puffing and muttering in my ear every now and then, and especially with every no show of Kazantzis, he ‘threatened’ to move to a different tutoring school· something that, after a few fruitless months at a desk next to me he did, to the relief of those who had been directly or indirectly (like me) involved in his initial decision.

A silent dissatisfaction, followed by murmurs of discontent by Roulis’ students, who had been patiently waiting for his arrival. They could hardly be appeased by the appearance of a ‘relief’ tutor at his place, usually a young graduate, who, with a few minutes' notice, would take over the reins of teaching us maths. (Not necessarily well-off families had to pay handsomely for each hour of tutoring with the anticipation of success in the exams.) Often, the young Roulis’ substitute appeared accompanied by his boss, who, after a few excuses and lame explanations behind his artfully disarming smile of the reasons preventing him ‘this time round’ to deliver his lecture to the expectant class (’because something unexpected had cropped up’), a praise for the worthiness of the substitute apprentice tutor, and a brief prologue as to the intended content of the lecture, he left the room in the same way as he had entered it: with one hand in the pocket of his waistcoat and the other, inevitably, holding a cigarette.

He was barely one meter and sixty centimetres tall, but an erect posture, a large and well-shaped head, featuring a broad forehead furrowed by wrinkles, befitting deep thinkers and intellects, as in busts of famous philosophers of antiquity, the wavy and messy, blackish-gray hair, along with his expensive three-piece suit attire, enhanced his personality with an aura that disguised the short stature. His features and presence radiated mathematical ingenuity, intellectual energy and exuded a masculine charm and overshadowed his physical littleness in the eyes of women at least, as I later found out when I met his attractive and, of course, much taller wife. (The height of a man, we read in the popular press of the time, was one of the main physical characteristics that attracted women to a man, therefore what height my body would reach in adulthood was of appreciable concern and preoccupied me and family during adolescence. Consequently, I was convinced a short stature of Roulis’ level would be a serious impediment in attracting the female sex, and the existence of such a short man would fatefully and obsessively be absorbed by a job or a life-long interest, like maths. What a shame, I was thinking then along with the longings I was harbouring for the opposite sex, guiding then much of our teenage behaviour, even within the confines of my tutoring school, which, unlike my school, was mixed.)

Eccentric and uncompromising, he reserved the praise only for his colleagues - subordinates in his tutoring school and a few former associates in his ventures, in short, the few who managed to endure a partnership with a cumbersome and demanding character, and the few young mathematicians whom he nurtured in mathematics and had successful careers. Only a handful of personalities from the Greek mathematical world he would unreservedly praise and even dedicated some of his books to them: those whom he had the good fortune to meet or whose work he studied, from the pantheon of late great Greek mathematicians, such as Caratheodory, and a certain professor Varopoulos, his and Father’s teacher in the university and renowned like Kazantzis for his eccentricity. But for most of the people in his trade and his time and place, whether academics, tutors, or high-school teachers, he reserved derogatory comments and scorn, usually condensed into terse disapprovals and aphorisms and expressed without further elaboration –as if they were axiomatic, a priori given or too obvious to argue against: "The fool!", "A disgraceful character!", "An irrelevant person!", " The idiot!", "What a Karagiozis!", etc., were the kind of phrases he habitually used to degrade fellow mathematicians, low in his esteem.

The few times he turned up in the classroom to deliver his maths lecture to a restless and expectant class (few despite the grandiose commitments to the students and parents at the beginning of the school year), he entered the room several minutes after the scheduled start, dressed in his three-piece suit (if he was in a hurry) or in waistcoat or sleeveless sweater over his shirt and tie. And he managed to magnetize everyone from the very first moment, including the few studious amongst us, the nerds, so to speak, with a solid background and generally good understanding of high-school maths, but also the relatively indifferent or the desperate for tutoring with lower levels of understanding and perhaps intelligence.

Between the index and the middle finger of his left hand a cigarette was burning incessantly, a cigarette he was dragging at intervals of a few minutes, until its long column of ash fell off from the pull of gravity. In his right he held a chalk leaving white traces around the pocket of his waistcoat. He lectured without any written notes, with the confidence and arrogant spirit of a brilliant man he undoubtedly was, a grand-maître who had the theorems of mathematics in his fingertips, a man recognized by his professional circle, despite his controversial character and the intense competition in the trade of private tutoring -the shadow-education thriving in Greece to counterbalance the inadequacies of the public education system. I formed the belief then that his career was trapped in that rather ignoble sector for political reasons and poor public relations. He might as well had been ostracised from the community of university professors, although his genius and knowledge surpassed many of those. He would always start his lesson, writing from the upper right corner of the blackboard, where he posed the problem to be solved or the theorem to be proven· with remarkable agility in the use of chalk and unparalleled calligraphy, he ended up in the lower right corner, covering the board with three or four columns of mathematical symbols and equations, inserting at points emphatic adverbs, such as ‘therefore’, ‘consequently, etc., in the solution of the problem or the proof of the theorem, which triumphantly ended with a QED! During this process, which all of us followed in awe and silent behind our desks, some bewildered, he would occasionally turn towards the fascinated and enchanted class, in order (I thought) to reassure himself of our amazement at his intelligence and knowledge. Eventually, with his back turned to that work of art, a work of intellectual elegance and calligraphy as displayed on the blackboard, he would ask his class a question or two, which, however, after a few seconds of pause, when his restless and sparkling eyes shifted from left to right, he would himself answer. The completion of a proof on the board was accompanied by an abrupt, almost dancing 180-degree turn to face the class, accompanied by slight shaking of his untidy fringe by the centrifugal forces from his turn, the throwing of what was left of the chalk in the general direction of the blackboard, the extinguishing of his cigarette with his foot after one last drag, a triumphant smile, and the piercing rays from his gaze. Another lighting of a cigarette would follow, before his hasty departure from the room. The class, after the great mathematician’s departure was in a hurry to copy the contents of the artwork on the blackboard to the last letter. It would have been weeks before the students of his tutoring school would enjoy a similar sought-after performance.