Konstantinos Doxiadis was born in an old Greek town of Eastern Rumelia, in today’s Bulgaria, at the end of the Balkan Wars. That was a time which saw the geographic reordering of the Balkans as well as massive population exchanges. The family’s forced relocation to Athens was soon followed by the Asia Minor catastrophe of 1922, which brought to the city hundreds of thousands of refugees. His father, a politically active physician, was Greek Minister of Health and Public Welfare for ten years starting in 1922, and focussed his attention on refugees and the socially vulnerable...