Lucas Papademos

Lucas Papademos (born October 11, 1947, Athens, Greece) is a Greek economist who served as vice president of the European Central Bank (ECB; 2002–10) and as prime minister of Greece (2011–12).

After finishing his secondary education in Greece, Papademos studied in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in physics (1970), a master’s degree in electrical engineering (1972), and a Ph.D. in economics (1978). His mentor and thesis adviser at MIT was Franco Modigliani, who later received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1985 for his work on financial markets. From 1975 to 1984 Papademos served as a professor of economics at Columbia University, and he assumed a similar role at the University of Athens in 1988–93. In 1980 he also worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and from 1985 at the central bank of Greece. He became governor of the latter in 1994, and, during his time in that position, which he held until 2002, Papademos helped guide Greece through its transition to the euro as the national currency. In 2002 he accepted the post of vice president of the ECB, which he left in 2010 to become financial adviser to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou. In this capacity Papademos participated in negotiations between Athens and the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the ECB that were aimed at bailing out the Greek economy during the European sovereign debt crisis. In addition to his government duties, Papademos continued to work as an educator, serving as a visiting professor at Harvard University from 2010.

In November 2011 Papandreou resigned under pressure from lawmakers after he proposed a referendum on the latest round of bailout measures. After an intense debate between the majority and opposition parties, Papademos—who was not a member of the parliament or officially affiliated with any political party—was appointed interim prime minister until a general election could be held the following year. He oversaw the enactment of various austerity measures before leaving office in May 2012. Five years later Papademos was wounded in an assassination attempt involving a letter bomb.