List of Famous people born in Greece
Mnesarchus of Athens
Mnesarchus or Mnesarch, of Athens, was a Stoic philosopher, who lived c. 160-c. 85 BC.
Richard Baldus
Richard Baldus was a German mathematician, specializing in geometry.
Nikolaos Skoufas
Nikolaos Skoufas was a founding member of the Filiki Eteria, a Greek conspiratorial organization against the Ottoman Empire.
Şemsi Efendi
Theaetetus
Theaetetus of Athens, possibly the son of Euphronius of the Athenian deme Sunium, was a Greek mathematician. His principal contributions were on irrational lengths, which was included in Book X of Euclid's Elements, and proving that there are precisely five regular convex polyhedra. A friend of Socrates and Plato, he is the central character in Plato's eponymous Socratic dialogue.
Hyginus
Pope Hyginus was the ninth bishop of Rome from c. 138 to his death in c. 142. Tradition holds that during his papacy he determined the various prerogatives of the clergy and defined the grades of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Eleuterus
Pope Eleutherius, also known as Eleutherus, was the bishop of Rome of the Catholic Church from c. 174 to his death. According to the Liber Pontificalis, he was a Greek born in Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece. His contemporary Hegesippus wrote that he was a deacon of the Roman Church under Pope Anicetus, and remained so under Pope Soter, whom he succeeded around 174.
Georgios Averoff
George M. Averoff, alternately Jorgos Averof or Georgios Averof, was a Greek businessman and philanthropist. He is one of the great national benefactors of Greece. Born in the town of Metsovo Averoff moved to Alexandria while still young. He was known through most of his life for founding numerous schools in both Egypt and Greece.
Dienekes
Dienekes or Dieneces was a Spartan soldier who fought and died at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. He was acclaimed the bravest of all the Greeks who fought in that battle. Herodotus (7.226) related the following anecdote about Dienekes:
- "(...) the Spartan Dienekes is said to have proved himself the best man of all, the same who, as they report, uttered this saying before they engaged battle with the Medes:— being informed by one of the men of Trachis that when the Barbarians discharged their arrows they obscured the light of the sun by the multitude of the arrows, so great was the number of their host, he was not dismayed by this, but making small account of the number of the Medes, he said that their guest from Trachis brought them very good news, for if the Medes obscured the light of the sun, the battle against them would be in the shade and not in the sun."
Charicles
Charicles, son of Apollodorus, was an ancient Athenian politician, notorious for his role as one of the Thirty Tyrants. His actual role within the Thirty may have been somewhat overestimated by modern scholars, due to his brief mention by Aristotle and by Xenophon and the lack of other details about the power-structure of that oligarchy.