Under the auspices of Her Excellency (H.E.) the President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou, the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) celebrated its 40th anniversary (1983-2023). The festivities started on Monday, December 11, 2023 and culminated on Sunday, December 17, 2023, with a Celebratory Event, which took place at the Foundation's headquarters in Heraklion, Crete.

From Monday 11 to Saturday 16 December, FORTH organized an Anniversary Exhibition of Achievements as well as an Exhibition of Historical and Photographic material, at the Heraklion Municipal Art Gallery (St. Mark’s Basilica), in the city center of Heraklion.

On Sunday, December 17th, an open Celebratory Event took place, at the "George Lianis" Amphitheater (FORTH main building), in Heraklion, Crete, which included:

• Scientific Program, (9.00-13.45), with four speeches by distinguished scientists from abroad:

Prof. Efthymios Kaxiras, Harvard University, USA

Prof. Edith Heard, Director EMBL, Heidelberg Germany

Prof. Lydia Kavraki, Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice University, Houston, Texas

Prof. Vicky Kalogera, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA

• A Festive Event at 18:00. The invited speaker was Mr. Angelos Chaniotis, Professor of Ancient History and Classics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton University (USA). His speech was entitled "The Cretan Ignores the Sea: An ancient proverb and seamanship in ancient Crete".

There was also a presentation of the «FORTHistory 1983-2023» research project, which explores FORTH’s historical, institutional and scientific trajectories in Greece and internationally and will eventually result in the publication of the first bilingual Anniversary Volume of its History. The project was conducted by a team of scholars collaborating with the Department of History of Technology of FORTH’s Institute for Mediterranean Studies.

During the event, former Presidents of FORTH were honored:

The main building of FORTH was named after its first President (1983-2004), Prof. Eleftherios Economou, Honorary Chair of FORTH, who led the effort of its establishment.

Also, two of FORTH’s meeting rooms were named after: Prof. Costas Fotakis, former President of FORTH and former Director of the Inst. of Electronic Structure and Laser (1997-2013), also having served as Alternate Minister for Research and Innovation (2015-2019), and late Vassilios Dougalis, former President and Vice-President of FORTH and Director of the Inst. of Applied and Computational Mathematics (2004-2016).