"No one can be excluded from Education. The regime had to change," he said.
Showing in practice that yes, one person can change the world as we are used to it and accept it...
His case Argyri Koumtzi is really special. Managed to "break" the regulations of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and become the first blind student in Greece to pass to the Physics Department of AUTH.
Argyris Koumtzis was diagnosed from the age of ten months with "atrophic optic nerve". This means he will have to live as a blind man. His father suffers from the same condition, while his mother is partially sighted. Despite this, Argyris was an excellent student from a very young age, and this is how he managed to get into the Aristotle University.
This process was not easy, as until recently blind students could not be admitted to the Physics department of AUTH, due to the difficulty they would face with the courses. But that didn't stop him. The solutions were found, and Argyris is the first blind student to study and graduate from this department, and indeed with a degree grade of 9.3/10.
At just 21 years old, Argyris has taken part in pan-Hellenic physics and mathematics competitions, visited MIT in 2016, attended summer schools in Voni and Cologne, while in 2017 he was one of 20 people among 500 applications, who were accepted for internships at Oxford University.
Argyris, who has now turned to Astrophysics, was accepted a few days ago to one of the largest and best known research groups in his field worldwide. The young man will complete his PhD with a four-year fellowship at Max Planc, the international school of solar and space physics of the University of Gottingen in Germany.
Argyris' tenacity and dedication is a reminder of two things: On the one hand, that in Greece we must take even more steps to include all individuals in education and provide opportunities, and on the other hand, that the human will can overcome many seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
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