Apostolos Doxiadis (Greek: Απόστολος Δοξιάδης) (b. 1953 in Brisbane, Queensland in Australia and raised in Greece) is a Greek writer.[1]
Since his early years Doxiadis was drawn to mathematics and at the age of 15 he entered Columbia University in New York City to study maths.[2] He later attended the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris where he studied mathematical modeling of the nervous system at the graduate level.[1]
Later, Doxiadis returned to his love of the theater and entered the film-making industry. For a few years, he worked as an actor and in 1983 he directed his first movie, Underground Passage. His second movie, Terirem, won the Best Works and Filmography at the 1988 Berlin Film Festival.[1][2]
The mid-1980s began a prolific period for Doxiadis. He wrote four novels: Parallel Life (Παράλληλη Ζωή - Parallili Zoi) in 1985, Macbeth (Μακαβέττας - Macavettas) in 1988, in 1992, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture (Ο θείος Πέτρος και η Εικασία του Γκόλντμπαχ - O Theios Petros kai i Eikasia tou Goldbach), which went on to become an international bestseller, and The Three Little Men (Τα τρία ανθρωπάκια - Ta Tria Anthropakia) in 1997. All four works were written in Greek.
Doxiadis, fluent in both Greek and English, translated Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture into English in 2000.[1] Uncle Petros was published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber, where it met great critical and commercial success, and in the U.S. by Bloomsbury USA.[1] It has since been translated into over 20 languages.[2]
His works in theater include The Tragic History of Jackson Pollock, Abstract Expressionist, a shadow-puppet musical, and a play called Seventeenth Night (Δέκατη έβδομη νύχτα - Dekati Evdomi Nychta), the subject of which is the theorems of Kurt Gödel and the final days of the mathematician's life.
He has also translated plays from English into Greek, including Romeo and Juliet (Ρωμαίος και Ιουλιέτα), Hamlet (Άμλετ), both by Shakespeare, and Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill.
Doxiadis' most recent project is the graphic novel Logicomix, co-written with Christos Papadimitriou, a Computer Science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Using Bertrand Russell as its narrator and protagonist, this work examines the history of mathematics, the 20th century, and, self-referentially, the lives of the authors and the history of the project's creation. Logicomix was published in September 2009 in Great Britain, by Bloomsbury Publishing, and in the U.S. by Bloomsbury USA. Logicomix received laudatory reviews, including the San Francisco Chronicle review which called it "imaginative, funny and gripping," and the book debuted at the top of the New York Times Best Seller List in the category Paperback Graphic Books.
In recent years, Doxiadis has been studying the intersection of mathematics and narrative. In addition to his books Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture and Logicomix, which are works of literature that contain mathematical subject matter, Doxiadis has published a collection of interviews and essays on this subject in a work called From Paranoia to Algorithms (Από την Παράνοια στους Αλγόριθμους - Apo tin Paranoia stous Algorithmous), and in 2006 established a non-profit organization, Thales and Friends (Θαλής και Φίλοι - Thalis ke Fili), which has the aim of bridging the gap between the disciplines.