Prishtina, 19 October 2022
I am very happy today that you, as young mathematicians and physicists, have won the first, the second and the third places, as you have won gold, silver and bronze medals, and other prizes in local and international competitions said the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, in the opening speech of the prize awarding ceremony for Kosovo school students.
The Prime Minister said he hopes that these prizes will be an additional incentive for students to continue pursuing their aptitudes and passions and that they will then translate the school lessons and knowledge gained into practical inventions, creative innovations and functional methods, wherever they will work in the future.
In the ceremony organized by the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prime Minister Kurti, jointly with Minister Nagavci, awarded prizes to the students who achieved successes in mathematics and physics competitions, including the National Mathematical Olympiad, the Republican Competition of Young Physicists, the Kosovo-Albanian Mathematical Olympiad, the International Mathematical Olympiad, Math Kangaroo and the European Mathematical Cup.
Prime Minister Kurti’s full speech:
Honourable Minister of Education, Ms. Arbërie Nagavci,
Dear teachers and educators,
Dear parents,
Dear students,
There are a lot of people in this hall today, and if they were to be clustered in groups of ten, we would probably become dozens. If there were more than 366 people here, that is, as many days as there can be at most in a year if February has 29 days, the 367th person would be left without an authentic and unique birthday even theoretically speaking. In this case, at least he or she and another one, i.e. at least two people, would have their birthday on the same date.
This may seem like very simple reasoning, so simple as to be trivial, but mathematics has a name for this as well, which is the Drikle Principle, after the nineteenth-century German mathematician Peter Drikle.
And when I was a student at the university, I recall that we solved a similar mathematical problem and it was something like this: How many people must be in a room at least so that the probability that at least two of them have the same birthday is greater than 50 percent? And, if I am not mistaken, the result is 23, but as you who solve math problems know, it takes 3-4 pages to get to that final number.
Even in ancient Greece, when Plato founded the Academy in Athens, he wrote at the entrance of the building: “Do not let the one who does not know geometry enter here”. This academy then gave the world what is known as the Father of Logic, Aristotle, who with his philosophical categories, and especially with causality, the Law on Causality, influenced so much anyone who came after him in the area of philosophy or sciences.
I recalled these, a little from my experience, and a little from what the math lessons are since among mathematicians and physicists it is generally preferred to speak in the mathematical language. Even when they are young, like yourselves, they are exactly at the age when they excel in mathematics, because mathematical aptitudes generally and usually appear in childhood and youth. But what is this mathematical language? For Galileo Galilei, mathematics is a language in which the great book of nature is written. So, it belongs to those physicists who believed that they mediate between nature and mathematics and that mathematics is a language of nature.
So, mathematics as a language of the universe itself, as Einstein believed when he said that “Equations are more important to me because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity”. I, as you know, have not fully complied with this Einstein principle, since I have chosen politics, perhaps not completely by myself, this choice is entirely mine. I have come here by going through the school math path, because when I was more or less your age and after that, initially I was inspired by my teacher Nafije Deva, then by the math teacher Taip Sylejmani, and finally by my math professors when I went to study at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Telecommunications and Computers, where there was a lot of mathematics, and this has undoubtedly influenced and shaped me beyond my awareness and knowledge.
Mathematics has been beneficial for me many times during my life, even in very difficult periods, but even when I was in prison or under house detention or in detention on remand, I also solved systems of equations with some unknowns, in order to keep memory and mind as fresh and active as possible and in this way preserve the logic.
To the extent that we respect mathematics, we will also cultivate logic to that extent. Therefore, being a mathematician means not only being a responsible citizen of the Republic but also outstanding in terms of logic. I have the impression that we live in times when this is rarely needed. Mathematics even helps us in politics, because numbers can be very stubborn and they must be well calculated for the state budget, economic growth and social allocations.
Dear attendees,
One of the main pillars for the sustainable economic and social development of Kosovo is quality education. The Government has therefore allocated 3.5 million euro for the provision of professional internships for students of vocational education and training schools, 106 scholarships to encourage girls to attend technical profiles and boys to attend deficit profiles, as well as about 1 thousand vouchers for graduates of vocational schools to attend information technology courses. In order to close the existing gender gap in professions, in the academic year 2021/2022, 1365 university scholarships have been allocated to students in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or as it is otherwise known as STEM.
Kosovo Government and institutions are focused on better curricula in order to extend maximum opportunities in achieving the highest potential for young men and women, for the present, but also for the future of our country.
Dear pupils and students,
I am very happy today that you, as young mathematicians and physicists, have won the first, the second and the third places, as you have won gold, silver and bronze medals, and other prizes both in local and international competitions. Therefore, I received with pleasure the invitation of the Minister of Education to be part of this organization where you will receive well-deserved prizes for the successes achieved in these mathematics and physics competitions.
Hopefully, these prizes will be an additional incentive for you to continue pursuing your aptitudes and passions for numbers, measurements, problem-solving, thinking, arithmetic and logic, geometry and algebra, mathematics and physics, so that you can translate the school lessons and knowledge gained into practical inventions, creative innovations and functional methods wherever you will work in the future.
Thank you for bringing good news to Kosovo, which is good for the present and the future of our country. Congratulations once again f the results and the success achieved and we wish you all the best, and even more success in your future, on which the future of the state and our society depends.
Thank you!
Last modified: October 20, 2022