ATHENS — In a sun-drenched room at the foundation here that is named for his father, Nick Papandreou pondered the task confronting his older brother, George: dismantling the Greek welfare state largely erected by their father, Andreas Papandreou.

“This is his moment,” Nick Papandreou, a 54-year-old Princeton-educated economist, said of George, Greece’s current prime minister. “Although it does happen to come at the worst time in Greek history.”

It is a history in many ways defined — for better or for worse — by three generations of Papandreou prime ministers, all of them depicted in a large black and white photograph that hung on the wall above Nick Papandreou.

The first was the patriarch, George Papandreou, who died in 1968 while under military house arrest.

Next to him in the photo stands Andreas, pipe in hand, the charismatic American-trained economist.