Athens: Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s finance minister who resigned on Monday despite the government having secured a resounding victory in a weekend referendum, rose to fame and infamy this year for his urban-cool look, his abrasive style, and acerbic attacks on austerity.
During the past five months of negotiations, the 54-year-old self-described “erratic Marxist”, Varoufakis seemed more at ease chatting with unemployed anarchists than with fellow European finance ministers, who often groaned about his blunt negotiating tactics.
Though the maverick minister has always taken a stance protecting ordinary Greeks, his background was anything but common.
He is the son of Giorgos Varoufakis, who at 90 still heads one of Greece’s leading steel producers, Halyvourgiki. He also attended the Moraitis School, which has alumni including prominent Greek leaders and artists. His early career was spent at the English universities of Essex, East Anglia and at Cambridge, and he has often been linked with research into game theory.
In 1998 Varoufakis moved to Australia, and he is now a dual Greek and Australian citizen. He moved back to Greece in 2000 to teach at the University of Athens, and in January 2013 accepted a post at the University of Texas in Austin.
Varoufakis has had a rebellious streak since a young age.
He told the BBC he has deliberately misspelled his name Yanis, writing it with one “n”, since a confrontation with a teacher in elementary school.
“I had an aesthetic problem with the double “n”,” he said. “So I decided to write my name with one. My teacher gave me a bad grade, which made me very angry and I’ve kept writing my name with one “n” ever since.”
