Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek-Australian dual national who lectured for more than a decade at the University of Sydney, has emerged as a central player in the world's most complex and destabilising economic malady.
The new Greek Finance Minister, appointed after the victory of a leftist-led coalition over the weekend, will lead negotiations as Greece seeks to restructure it's enormous debt.
It will be a negotiation keenly watched by global financial markets and, especially, the impoverished Greek people. And, in many ways, few could be better prepared than the self-described "libertarian Marxist".
Varoufakis had become a global figure before his elevation with his critique of the global financial system and his pessimistic - and prescient - prediction that Europe's bailout of Greece would fail.
But his time as an academic, including his stint in Sydney, is instructive about how Varoufakis will tackle the job, and the intellectual tools he has at his disposal.
"He was committed to exposing what was wrong with orthodox economics, but he was a critic who had a deep understanding of what he was criticising," says Gabrielle Meagher, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney's political economy department, who studied under, and worked alongside, Varoufakis.
In his late 20s, Varoufakis joined the university in 1988, cutting a striking figure amid the earnest and crumpled academics of its economics faculties. Long-haired, usually in jeans and a T-shirt, Varoufakis could delivery electrifying lectures on his chosen topic, the somewhat arcane discipline of game theory.
"He made economics a lot more interesting," said Helen Goritsas, a former student, now a senior lecturer at the Academy of Information Technology.
"He was young, very vibrant and dynamic. He had lots of charisma."
His specialty of game theory is possibly best known as the domain of management consultants and military planners - as far away from left-wing political economics as one could get.
The mathematical discipline studies strategic decision making in competitive situations. Its best known "game" is the "prisoner's dilemma", which shows how two individuals can "rationally" come to a decision that is in neither of their interests.
"He was aware of its limitations of game theory, but I'm sure he will apply what he learnt about strategic thinking to whole problem of Europe's political economy," said Frank Stillwell, another former colleague at the University of Sydney.
"And he will be doing it at a time when the future of the European Union is in the balance."
In a series of loans from 2010 to 2012 designed to bolster its ailing economy pummelled by the global financial crisis, Greece's bankers - the International Monetary Fund and Europe's big economies - insisted on austerity measures that have perversely crimped its growth, leaving it unable to pay off the debt.
As Greece remains in deficit, its unemployment rate is over 25 per cent. There are more young people unemployed, than employed.
Varoufakis wants Greece to be allowed not to repay a large part of that debt, or at least have it restructured on favourable terms.
But he does not want Greece to leave the eurozone or dump its currency, recognising that any new Greek currency could be battered and the country would have trouble raising capital.
Game theory is, in the end, about getting the best outcome from a difficult situation. Varoufakis used to tell his students that it showed that collaboration between rivals often produced the optimal result, Goritsas says.
With the parties remaining far apart on agreement, it will be a message he hopes the rest of Europe hears.
