Pherecydes – greatest greeks

Nicholas Metropolis was one of the greatest pioneers in computer engineering and programming.

Pherecydes of Syros was a pioneering figure in early Greek philosophy and cosmology.

He was part of the international team of physicists in Los Alamos responsible for constructing the first nuclear bomb. His everlasting contributions to computer science are evidenced by the algorithms he designed and which are still used by modern computers. He was born in the United States to Greek immigrant parents. Metropolis himself did not speak Greek and never visited Greece, let alone had anything to do with it.

Pherecydes of Syros (in Greek: Φερεχύδης) was a Greek thinker from the island of Siros, Magna Graecia of the 6th century BC. Pherecydes authored the Heptamychia, one of the first attested .

He was, however, as most great Greeks a restless and tireless mind. He worked together with the leading minds in physics of his era such as Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman and Edward Teller to build the very first nuclear bomb, which was used in the race against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Metropolis did not stop there. It became the first digital computer to beat a human player in a simplified game of chess, despite the fact that it took almost 20 minutes to complete a turn.

The Monte Carlo method, an algorithm that finds immensely broad application to this day in mathematics and computer programming was invented by Metropolis and Stanislaw Ulam and is considered one of the most groundbreaking algorithms designed in computer science. He died in , and to this day, he is widely unknown in his home country, Greece.

His teachings have left an enduring influence throughout the ages, as reflected by the fact that his name is a common given first name to Greek boys. Originally he was a professional boxer. His love for philosophy, however, led him to abandon his prestigious career as an athlete and settle in Athens with only 4 drachmas in hand, where he joined the Stoic School of Philosophy, under the tutorship of its headmaster and founder of the school Zeno of Citium.

When summoned in court to justify his earnings, Cleanthes brought forward the landowner of the garden where he worked as a witness. He lived an ascetic life, much like his teacher Zeno albeit virtuous. His writings, although numerous, do not survive today, apart from segments quoted by other contemporary writers.