Armenia's fourth president once helped create a best-selling Tetris spin-off
Before he led Armenia, Armen Sarkissian was a theoretical physicist who worked at Cambridge alongside Stephen Hawking. In 1991 he co-created Wordtris, a word-building twist on Tetris that, bundled with the original, briefly became the best-selling video game on the planet. Diplomacy, business and the presidency came afterwards.
Sarkissian, born on 23 June 1953, studied theoretical physics and mathematics at Yerevan State University and taught physics there from 1976 to 1984. That year he went to Cambridge as a visiting fellow, working with Hawking and Martin Rees, and in 1988 he founded a department of computer modelling of complex systems back in Yerevan. Wordtris was later sold to Spectrum Holobyte, and in 2023 he recounted the tense deal and shared a podcast with Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, whom he had last seen in Soviet times.
Independence pulled him into diplomacy. In November 1991 he opened Armenia's embassy in London, its first mission in the West, and he became one of the longest-serving ambassadors to Britain of any country. He was also Armenia's first envoy to the Vatican, the European Union and NATO.
His spell as prime minister, beginning in 1996, was brief but busy. He scrapped the Ministry of Information, opening the way to press freedom, and restructured a battered energy sector before a cancer diagnosis forced his resignation in 1997. After recovering he advised the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, consulted for multinationals and ran a Eurasia centre at Cambridge's Judge Business School.
Parliament chose him as president on 2 March 2018 with 90 of 105 votes. During mass street protests that spring he walked unguarded into the crowds and threatened to quit if force were used. Frustrated that the office held few real powers, he resigned in January 2022 and a year later published The Small States Club.
Source: Armen Sarkissian
