Front and CentreFRONT AND CENTRE

Two-Minute Interview – Dimitri Kitsikis

Do you wish to be featured in the Two-Minute Interview? Would you like to learn more about one of your colleagues? Just answer the online questionnaire, or drop us a line at gazette@uOttawa.ca, or contact Brigitte Génier at 562-5708.

Dimitri Kitsikis
Dimitri Kitsikis
Professor Emeritus, Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

What is your most important function at the University and why?

Being Greek, the same as Socrates: To be a horsefly and prick my colleagues and my students so they can think and never go to sleep.

What is it about your job that inspires you most?

Being a historian. I have discovered that God is the perfect historian because he knows everything as a historian should know.

How did you come to your area of research?

I started publishing poems (six volumes), then I studied medicine and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, then finally understood that only history encompasses poetry, medicine and philosophy.

What is the best thing about being retired?

To be retired is to be dead.

What was your life’s proudest moment?

When I discovered God through my four children.

What would you change in the world today if you could?

Everything.

Who is the most influential person in your life? Why?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) because he is a saint (Saint Jean-Jacques).

What would your co-workers be most surprised to know about you?

That a public library has been set up this year in Athens, Greece containing exclusively my personal archives and books under the name “Dimitri Kitsikis Public Library.”

What is your favourite pastime?

Dreaming.

You’ve just won a $1 million. What do you do?

I will think that someone wants to punish me and if I was not a believer I would commit suicide.

What is the quality you value the most?

I value most the heart of a child.

Which five people (living or dead) would you like to invite to a dinner party? Tell us why.

Socrates, Christ, Krishna, the Buddha, Confucius. Because I would at last stop speaking like a professor.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

In the hands of God.

What is your greatest hope for the future?

Coming back to the Stone Age.

What is the best kept secret in your faculty, department or service?

That we are not serious people.