Greek American Scientists - The National Herald€¦ · in the book are Greek. They include Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes and Galen. Pythagoras

The National Herald

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DECEMBER 6, 2008

www.thenationalherald.com

SPONSORED BY THE PARLIAMENT OF THE HELLENIC REPUBLIC, DIMITRIS SIOUFAS, PRESIDENT

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THE NATIONAL HERALD DECEMBER 6, 20082 Greek American Scientists

This issue of “GreekAmericanScientists” informsus of theaccomplishments of

eight Greek Americanscientists and the impact theyhave had on our lives. Sinceancient times Greeks havebeen at the forefront ofscience. I recently read a bookentitled “100 Scientists WhoChanged the World” by JohnHudson Tiner. Not surprising,the first seven scientists listedin the book are Greek. Theyinclude Pythagoras,Hippocrates, Aristotle, Euclid,Archimedes, Eratosthenes andGalen.

Pythagoras (c. 580 – 500B.C.), who believed that theworld was mathematical innature, applied mathematicsto music as well as toastronomy. He is best knownfor developing thePythagorean Theorem: thesquare of the length of thehypotenuse of a right triangleis equal to the sum of thesquares of the lengths of itsother two sides.

In the time of Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 B.C.), doctorsbelieved that vengeful gods caused diseases. Hippocrates, thefather of medicine, came to the conclusion that each disease hada natural cause. He said, “Find the cause, and then you can curethe disease.” He advised his patients to eat healthy, get plenty ofrest and have clean surroundings. Sound familiar? Upongraduation, many of today’s medical students take a modernversion of the Hippocratic Oath, which is based on his guidelinesfor honorable conduct.

A student of Plato, Aristotle (c. 384 – 322 B.C.) founded theLyceum in Athens. In his work he made careful observations,collected various specimens, and summarized and classified thespecimens. This became the basis for the scientific method as wenow know it. He wrote treatises on logic, metaphysics, physics,ethics and natural sciences. Although his works were forgottenin Europe during the Dark Ages, when they were reintroduced,they exerted a major influence on Western thought.

“Elements of Geometry” by Euclid (c. 330 – 270 B.C.) wasused as a textbook for more than 2,000 years. His book, whichsummed up the teachings of early mathematicians, includedplane geometry, proportion, properties of numbers and solidgeometry. He proved that the number of prime numbers isinfinite.

Using mathematical concepts to investigate the world,Archimedes (c. 287 – 212 B.C.) developed formulas for findingareas and volumes of spheres and cylinders and built inventions.

Farmers around the worldcontinue to use an irrigationmethod he invented. Shaped

like a large screw, it drawswater from rivers. His

experiments with the leverresulted in his statement of

the law of simple machines:the load times the distance

the load moves equals efforttimes the distance through

which the effort is applied. Heserved under the patronage of

Hieron II, the King ofSyracuse, who challenged him

to single handedly drag abarge out of the water. He did

so with a compound pulley.The king also challenged himto determine whether a new

crown was made of pure gold.He used the law of buoyancy,

which he discovered whiletaking a bath. As the story is

told, he leaped out of his bathshouting “Eureka (I have

found it!”).

Eratosthenes (c. 276 – 196B.C.) wrote about

mathematics, astronomy,geography, history and

literary criticism. He inventeda system of latitude and

longitude. The map hecompiled of the world (which extended from the British Isles toSri Lanka and included countries bordering the Mediterranean

Sea) was used for 200 years. Upon determining that theEgyptian solar calendar fell short on one day every fourth year,

he suggested adding an extra day every four years. Mostsignificant, he calculated the circumference of the earth at

25,000 miles, which was remarkably close to the measurementcalculated today: 24,902 miles.

The Greek physician Galen (c. 130 to 200 A.D.) believed “aphysician needs to study the body, as an architect needs to

follow a plan.” He learned about human anatomy by studyinghuman skeletons, dissecting animals and observing humans inhis work as a physician at a school for gladiators. Although the

more than 100 tracts and books he wrote contained some errors(including that disease results from an imbalance of four vital

fluids), he advanced medical knowledge by emphasizing theimportance of understanding the human body.

We bring you “Greek American Scientists” to honor modernday scientists and congratulate them. They have built upon the

legacy of their predecessors. Like the early scientists thatpreceded them, they are using their inquisitive minds and

creative spirits to change the world we live in.

Elaine Thomopoulos Managing Editor

“Greek American Scientists”E-mail: [email protected]

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reporting the news and addressingthe issues of paramount interest

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THE NATIONAL HERALD DECEMBER 6, 2008 Greek American Scientists 3

Prologue by Mr. Dimitris Sioufas,

President of the Hellenic Parliament,

For The National Herald’s special “Greek American Scientists” insert

The roots of science can be traced to Ancient Greece and ancient Greekphilosophy – from Thales of Miletos all the way to Aristotle. Today, theheart of the global scientific community beats in the United States –which has become a second home to many Greeks of the Diaspora.

Today’s Greek American scientists bear the burden of continuing theirancestors’ storied tradition in this field, both now in the present, and in theyears to come. The seeds of this tradition were first planted in the United Statesthanks to Dr. George Papanikolaou, and are blossoming today thanks toprominent scientists who honor their Greek roots and grace the U.S. scientificcommunity.

The Hellenic Parliament is proud of all the scientists in the Greek Diaspora. TheNational Herald’s special issue dedicated to Greek American scientistsillustrates their longstanding presence and contribution. In congratulatingthem, we hope that the next generation will follow their example all the more,and yield many new successes of their own.

As Greeks, regardless of where we live, we honor our history, traditions, scienceand our Greek homeland.


By Mark N. LardasSpecial to The National Herald

Growing up on the is-land of Chios, Dr. Sta-matios Krimigis neverdreamed his involve-ment with rockets

would entail more than the Easterrocket war in his home town ofVrodtados. The congregations oftwo churches in Vrodtados, St.Marcos and the Church of thePanayeas, celebrate Easter byshooting homemade rockets ateach other. Real rockets.

Young Stamatios made andlaunched missiles at the rivalchurch. As Krimigis told The Na-

tional Herald, “I did not know Iwould someday be part of teamsthat would send things to the plan-ets.”

Krimigis followed a traditionmore ancient than the rocket wars.When Jason set out the greatestvoyage of Greek mythology, Jasonhad the best shipwright of the age,Argus, build the ship. Like Argus,Krimigis designs ships – exceptKrimigis’ designs travel through in-terplanetary space.

Jason traveled to the then-dis-tant reaches of the Black Sea.Krimigis’ designs have traveled dis-tances unimaginable to the Arg-onauts: throughout the solar sys-tem and into interstellar space.

Born in 1938, Stamatios grewup in Vrodtados along with hisbrother, sister and mother. His fa-ther immigrated to the UnitedStates just before World War II. Hisfather intended to send for thefamily, but war intervened. Thefamily was not reunited until theearly 1950s, when his father couldfinally return.

Stamatios’ earliest memoriesare of the German occupation. “Wehad a curfew. At night, we wouldput an oil lamp on a low table, withsomeone on lookout for Germanpatrols. If a patrol came by wewould blow out the light until thepatrol passed. When we playedoutside, we would find shards ofglass and use them to puncture thetires of German vehicles. At thetime, Germans were not nice peo-ple.”

Krimigis remembers his youthon Chios fondly. “We did not haveelectricity until I was in the sixthgrade, but it was a happy exis-tence. We had enough food to eatand clothes to wear and goodschools.”

Greek society then appreciatedthe value of education. “Therewere special ceremonies wherekids would get books, prizes, andrecognition for academic achieve-ment, not sports.”

Stamatios was a good student.He enjoyed both science and hu-manities, getting good grades inboth subjects while he was in the“gymnasium” (Greek high school).He could have gone into anything,but his mother wanted him to bean engineer. “She had a pragmaticview of education,” recalled Krim-igis, “telling me that engineers canalways find a job.”

While his father was in America,he set aside money for his son to goto college. Krimigis went to theUniversity of Minnesota living withrelatives of his mother, near Min-neapolis. He received a baccalaure-ate in physics from Minnesota in1961. From there, he went to theUniversity of Iowa, where he re-ceived both his masters and doctor-ate.

At Iowa, Krimigis studied underlegendary Dr. James Van Allen, oneof America’s true space science pio-neers. Van Allen’s experiments,which flew aboard the first Ameri-can satellite, discovered the radia-tion belts that now bear his name.Krimigis considers Van Allen his

mentor.After three years on the faculty

at Iowa, following the award of hisdoctorate in 1965, Krimigis movedto the Applied Physics Laboratoryat Johns Hopkins University in Bal-timore, Maryland. He has beenthere ever since, eventually risingto the head of the APL’s Space De-partment in 1991, becoming itsemeritus head in 2004.

In 1968, when he arrived at theAPL, there were few better placesto be. It was the dawn of an age ofplanetary exploration. Johns Hop-kins is close to Goddard SpaceFlight Center, home of NASA’s un-

manned space exploration efforts.Krimigis soon made the APL a ma-jor player in planetary exploration,rivaling the Jet Propulsion Labora-tory in California.

Krimigis first drafted a proposalfor the Pioneer 10 Mission, the firstspace probe sent to Jupiter. Histeam was not selected. “I was dis-appointed,” he said, “but it proveda good thing.”

The loss meant his team wasavailable for the next major pro-ject, an ambitious effort to visitmultiple planets in one mission,possible because of a rare align-ment of planets. In 1970 Krimigis

Stamatios Krimigis:Argus of the Space Age

Stamatios Krimigis poses near the Atlas V rocket that carried the NewHorizons spacecraft into space. New Horizons was successfullylaunched on January 19, 2006 and will arrive at Pluto on July 14,2015.

Dr. Stamatios Krimigis poses next to a half-scale mock-up of theCassini Spacecraft, now orbiting the planet Saturn. Krimigis is princi-pal investigator for the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument aboardthe Cassini.

COURTESY STAMATIOS KRIMIGIS



wrote a proposal for the design andmanagement of the mission’sspacecraft, Voyager.

It was a big mission. “We hadstiff competition,” Krimigis remi-nisced. “Including a team led byVan Allen.” When the dust settled,Krimigis’ team won. Van Allen wasdisappointed, but later told Krim-igis that if he had to lose, he washappy that he had lost to one of hisformer students.

It started a career designing in-terplanetary spacecraft. The twoVoyager spacecraft eventually visit-ed all four of the major outer plan-ets. Krimigis was also principal in-vestigator for the Galileo missionto Jupiter, the Cassini/Huyens mis-sion to Saturn and its moon Titan,the Ulysses probe, which exploredthe Sun’s Polar Regions, the Ad-vanced Composition Explorer mis-sion exploring interplanetaryspace, and the MESSENGER probeto Mercury.

In the mid-1980s he served asthe principal investigator for theCharge Composition ExplorerSpacecraft, one of three satellitesin the Active Magnetospheric Parti-cle Tracer Explorers Program. Themission was a collaborative effortbetween the United States, GreatBritain and Germany. Krimigisworked closely with German scien-tists and engineers on the project.Times change. This time, he en-

joyed having Germans around.By 1980 Krimigis had become

chief scientist and head of the APLSpace Department. “I enjoyed run-ning an engineering organization,”Krimigis reminisced. “I managed aprogram with 600 people and a$200 million annual budget.”

He had a problem, though. “Inthe 1980s we did not have enoughmissions. Galileo was the only ap-proved mission. I could not keepmy people busy. People were say-ing flying planetary explorationspacecraft were too expensive. Itried to convince NASA and the sci-ence community that low-cost mis-sions were possible. At the timelow-cost planetary mission was anoxymoron.”

“I convinced NASA to try one,”he said. “The Near-Earth AsteroidMission was the result. We got itdone on schedule and within bud-get.” Krimigis and his team facedand overcame many challengeswith NEAR. It successfully ren-dezvoused with the asteroid Erosand spent a successful year aroundEros.

Krimigis’ team then landedNEAR on Eros. “It was not de-signed to land,” said Krimigis. “Butit would have drifted off from Eroswhen we ran out of altitude controlfuel. So we thought, ‘Why not tryit?’ We did it too, eased it down

successfully.” NEAR continuedsending data back from Eros fortwo weeks after the landing. NEARdramatically demonstrated the val-ue of low-cost interplanetary mis-sions. As a result, NASA createdthe Discovery Program for furtherlow-cost planetary missions.

Krimigis’ achievements haveearned him an international repu-tation. The Academy of Athenselected him to the Chair of Scienceof Space in 2005. In 2007 he wasmade chairman of the Academy’sSection of Basic Science. Greecemade him a delegate to the ESACouncil in December 2006. He re-ceived the Smithsonian Trophy forAchievement in 2002. AviationWeek and Space Technologyawarded him “Laurels in Space” in1997 for his work on NEAR, andagain in 2001 for resurrecting amission to Pluto.

With the arrival of the MES-SENGER at Mercury, he becamethe first scientist to have designedand built instruments that havegone to all eight planets. WhenNew Horizons finally reaches Plu-to, one of his instruments will beaboard. That makes him the firstscientist to send experiments to allnine objects considered planetsduring the 20th century.

As for the future?He still conducts research and

still publishes science. Krimigisplans to continue his exploration ofspace for as long as he can. For Sta-matios Krimigis, the voyage contin-ues.

The National Herald inter-viewed Stamatios Krimigis.

TNH: Who were the major in-fluences in your life?

SK: Professor James Van Allenwas the major influence in my ca-reer. He put me under his wingwhen I was at Iowa. I owe him a lotfor what I have accomplished sincethen. He gave me my professionaldirection. Growing up, I would sayit was my teachers when I was inChios. In fact, simply growing upthere with its emphasis on educa-tion. I was lucky enough to havegood teachers who encouraged meto further my education and go tocollege.

My mother was another big in-fluence. I dreaded coming homewith a B+ or A-. I would hearabout it from my mother. She felt Icould do better. I did not like itthen, but now, I realize it was agood thing.

TNH: What led you to physics?SK: As a freshman at Minnesota,

I started in electrical engineering. Inmy sophomore year, I took physicsfrom an inspiring professor. Hemade me know that I wanted to gointo physics. I changed majors andhave been a physicist ever since.

Dr. Stamatios Krimigis, at the NEAR Mission Operations Center, announces the safe landing of the spacecraft on asteroid Eros in 2001. To hisleft sit NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski, then chair of NASA's Subcommittee on Appropriations.

At the World Space Congress in 2002, Stamatios Krimigis receivedthe COSPAR (Committee for Space Research) Space Science Award,the highest scientific distinction that the worldwide space communi-ty bestows. Krimigis’ mentor, Prof. James A. Van Allen was the firstrecipient of the award in 1984. Continued on page 22

JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY


By Penelope PetropoulSpecial to The National Herald

What is the universemade of? Whatholds it together?We realize that theworld is made of

some fundamental building blocks,but what are they? As the websiteof the European Organization forNuclear Research notes, the Greekthinker Empedocles first describedthe elementals as earth, wind, fireand water. Today we know thatthere are things more fundamentalyet – like the atom. For many years,it was thought that the atom was

the fundamental building block ofthe universe. Fundamental in thiscase means basic – not made ofanything smaller. But scientiststhen realized that atoms were in-deed made of something smaller.They are made up of yet simplerbuilding blocks and consist of a nu-cleus and a cloud of negative elec-trons.

Scientists then thought that thisnucleus must be the most funda-mental component of the universeuntil a later discovery enabledthem to realize that the nucleuswas comprised of still smaller ele-ments -- protons and neutrons.

And then … scientists discoveredthat even these tiny protons andneutrons are made of even tinierparticles called quarks. Physicistsnow think that quarks and leptonsare the most fundamental buildingblocks of the universe. Of course itis possible that there is a yet evenmore fundamental particle outthere but as of yet, none has beenfound. Physicists are constantlylooking for new particles, andwhen they find them, they catego-rize them and study them to under-stand how they interact.

So why does this all matter? Un-derstanding these particles helps

us to understand the origins of theuniverse and what holds it togeth-er. This understanding has vast im-plications for mankind and can fueladvances in many realms of sci-ence from cosmology to medicaltechnology. Of course, this knowl-edge can also satisfy our most basichuman desire to know and under-stand our world and how it wasformed. The thirst for this knowl-edge is driving truly amazing re-search at Fermi National Accelera-tor Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

Dr. Vaia Papadimitriou is at thecenter of this research. She and hercolleagues in particle physics study

the building blocks (most basic ele-ments) of matter and what holdsthem together. The field is alsocalled high-energy physics becauseas Papadimitriou explained, “tostudy the tiny particles you needhigh energy – it is somewhat likewhen you use a microscope; thehigher magnifying power youhave, the more details you can see.Likewise, the higher energy wehave to probe matter, the more de-tails we can see.”

Papadimitriou studies these de-tails working on both the Accelera-tor side and the Detector side. Sheserves as assistant division head of

The Fundamentals of our Universe:Dr. Vaia Papadimitriou Strives to AnswerEternal Questions

FERMILAB

Fermilab’s CDF detector, the size of a three-story house, weights about 6,000 tons. Its subsystems record the ‘debris’ emerging from high-energy-proton-antiproton collisions, un-veiling the secrets of the early universe.


Fermilab's Accelerator Division andhas served as a member of the CDF(Collider Detector at Fermilab) ex-perimental collaboration for thepast 18 years. Fermilab houses theworld’s most powerful particle ac-celerator, the Tevatron. As Pa-padimitriou explained, “We haveprotons and antiprotons collidingtogether every 396 nanosecondsand producing high energies (1.96trillion electron volts at the centerof mass), and out of these high en-ergies we have many new particlesbeing produced.” The Fermilab ac-celerator chain consists of eight ac-celerators and beam transport linesconnecting them. As Papadimitriounoted, it takes the work of sevenaccelerators before the protons andantiprotons so carefully createdcollide inside the largest accelera-tor, the Tevatron, which measuresfour miles in circumference. Andmore than three trillion antipro-tons must be collected before theycan be sent with the protons intothe Tevatron ring. It is a huge com-plex and a very complex endeavor.Much careful preparation by Pa-padimitriou and her colleaguestakes place to ensure that beam cir-culation and collisions happensmoothly, and if something goeswrong, one must be a detective todetermine where in this vast com-

plex and process the problem oc-curred.

As Fermilab’s website explains,the Tevatron, “accelerates protonsand antiprotons close to the speedof light, and then makes them col-lide head-on inside the CDF andD0 detectors. The detectors are be-ing used to study the products ofsuch collisions.” The CDF collabo-ration, of which Papadimitriou is amember, consists of approximately600 people from 53 institutions lo-cated around the world.

In addition to producing pro-tons and antiprotons and sendingthem through the accelerator, Pa-padimitriou has been participatingover the years in all stages of theCDF detector building and its up-grade, in the calibration and main-tenance of the detector, in data tak-ing as well as the analysis of thedata. She is a coauthor of approxi-mately 450 publications in peer-re-viewed journals, has made numer-ous presentations at national andinternational conferences andworkshops, and has given manyacademic seminars and colloquia.

The work Papadimitriou andothers like her do in particlephysics advances our understand-ing of what the world is made of,and the technology used to enablethis work has benefited society in

many ways. As Papadimitriou not-ed, the World Wide Web was creat-ed so that physicists could sharevast amounts of data. And, MRItechnology and medical accelera-tors also owe their existence towork at accelerator laboratorieslike Fermilab.

Though this work has many di-rect and indirect benefits to society,

what drives Papadimitriou is thesheer pleasure of finding answersto some of life’s most fundamentalquestions, and then translating herexcitement about physics to others.When asked what drew her to thisuncommon field, Papadimitriounoted that a great high schoolteacher in Greece triggered her in-terest, and then two college profes-

sors (who had studied at the Uni-versity of Chicago) encouraged herto pursue graduate work there. Pa-padimitriou received her B.S. de-gree in physics from Aristotle Uni-versity of Thessaloniki. She wasgranted a four-year graduate fel-lowship at the Institute of NuclearPhysics (Demokritos) in Athens,Greece, in 1982, and in 1983, shebecame a graduate student at theUniversity of Chicago. She receivedher M.S. degree in physics from theUniversity of Chicago in June 1985and her Ph.D. degree in physicsfrom the University of Chicago in1990. Papadimitriou was a LeonLederman Postdoctoral Fellow atFermilab from 1990 - 1994 and un-til September 2005 was a professorat Texas Tech University. In August2003, she accepted her current Fer-milab Scientific Staff position andsince September 2005 she also hasbeen serving as adjunct professorat Texas Tech University.

When asked what advice shehas for people wanting to excitechildren about physics, Papadim-itriou encouraged exposing chil-dren to as many opportunities aspossible to learn about science. Shenoted that Fermilab is open to thepublic and that there are many freetours and programs for childrenand adults. Papadimitriou also en-couraged looking at the Fermilabwebsite and commented on howenthusiastic children of all ageshave been while on tours at Fermi-lab. Children are particularly im-pressed by the accelerators. Pa-padimitriou also encourages talk-ing with children about how thingswork in the world around them –refrigerators, microwaves, base-ball, sailing. When one talks aboutthe scientific principles behindhousehold items and familiar activ-

The Fermilab accelerator complex in Batavia, Illinois, accelerates protons and antiprotons close to the speed of light. The Tevatron, four milesin circumference, is the world’s most powerful accelerator.

FERMILAB

Continued on page 23

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By Nile SouthernSpecial to The National Herald

Dr.Christos Pa-padimitriouis a modern-day Greekphilosopher,

scholar, novelist, essayist and theo-rist. Papadimitriou, professor inthe Computer Science Division atthe University of California, haswritten a dizzying array of paperson subjects dealing with “multi-ob-jective optimization,” biology,database theory, complexity andthe Internet. His inquiring minddelves into the history and futureof man’s ability to quantify knowl-edge and use it most effectively. Asa writer of an innovative noveldealing with the history of comput-ing, and a forthcoming graphicnovel, he says, “Mathematics andliterature have been subjects thathave been divorced for too long,but there is a movement to bringthem back together again. I thinkmy novels should be seen in thisspirit.”

For a man on the future’s cut-ting-edge, Papadimitriou is in-spired by the past. His novel, “Tur-ing,” and his forthcoming graphicnovel entitled “Logicomix,” writtenwith playwright/mathematicianApostolos Doxiadis, play out as anextended homage to the thought

processes, crises and dramas thatwent into the birth of his profes-sion.

His book, “Computational Com-plexity,” is one of the most widelyused textbooks in the field of com-putational complexity theory, andhis book “Algorithms,” (co-au-thored with Sanjoy Dasgupta andUmesh Vazirani,) according to thepublisher, McGraw Hill, “explainsthe fundamentals of algorithms ina story line that makes the materialenjoyable and easy to digest.” De-spite his rigorous academic life inthe U.S., Papadimitriou keeps veryclose ties with Greece, where helives for several months each year.

Christos Papadimitriou spenthis early childhood years in Lidori-ki, a town near Delphi on MountParnassus.

“My parents were born in Arca-dia, in the Peloponnese, in two an-cient towns: my mother in Tegea,my father close to Asea. My fatherwas a high school math teacherwho was involved in the resistanceagainst the Germans — the liaisonbetween the two major, and laterwarring, resistance movements,EDES (Ethnikos DimokratikosEllinikos Syndesmos) and ELAS(Greek People’s Liberation Army).As the long war was winding to anend, in his late forties he met myMom, who, like him had given uphope for family. I was born on Au-

gust 16, 1949, the day that is con-sidered the beginning of the newera — the day after the final defeatof the (Communist) insurgents.

“When I was born, my fatherwas teaching at Lidoriki. My child-hood was all rural mountainousGreece, complete with a genuineRoumeliot accent that would giveme much grief for years after Icame to Athens at the age of six. Iwent to an unremarkable elemen-tary school and the elite Varvakiohigh school. When I finished highschool in 1967, almost the day Ifinished, the coup that brought inthe dictatorship happened.”

TNH: What was the dictatorshiplike for you?

CP: These were dark years forGreece. It was an operetta — likethe Charlie Chaplin film “The Dic-tator.” Largely incompetent andmarginally sane people suddenlyrunning a country — so it would befunny if it wasn’t so tragic — if ithadn’t truncated so many lives.

TNH: How did it affect yourstudies?

CP: My student years were nofun. There was a resistance fromthe beginning — it grew, and thenexploded. Today, I sit in front of mycomputer, I can click — and see thewhole world — as everyone inGreece now does. But back then, Iwas convinced that my destiny wasto stay in my town and my neigh-borhood — to be an engineer, andlive my life there. At Athens Poly-technic I studied mechanical andelectrical engineering — I didn’thave an inclination for either sub-ject—it was the most challengingand prestigious school to get into. Ilike mathematics.

TNH: How did you come tothe United States?

CP: I was foolish and selfish.The way I was thinking back then, Ithought the Greeks will never riseup against the junta — it will belike Franco’s Spain for another 40years. I came to the United Statesexpressly to flee that terrible situa-tion. After I left the Army, I leftGreece immediately. Of course, theirony is that two months after I left,as soon as I arrived at Princeton,the student insurrection in AthensPolytechnic, my school, erupted.Some of my friends were killed.Tragic event. But of course it wasthe beginning of the end for theJunta. By this time I was hooked incomputer science.

TNH: At Princeton, what didyou study?

CP: Life is funny. Because of mynarrow horizons, I thought it was-n’t possible to move away from mysubject. So, I applied to Princeton’selectrical engineering department.But my application had complicat-ed enough sentence structure forthem to place it in the computersciences pile. While I was seeingthis as a way out of Greece, and away to continue with my life, I en-countered this incredible field —that became the passion of my life.I remember feeling supernaturally,spiritually grateful and elated. Thedepth and elegance of this field

captivated me immediately. It wasa very dramatic moment for the de-velopment of computer science.More powerful computers werecoming along. However, it was be-coming clear that there were prob-lems that computers could notsolve fast enough.

TNH: This opens up a themethat recurs in your work — the fas-cinating time which you’ve re-searched about the dawn of mod-ern-day computer sciences — canyou talk about that?

CP: For the past 40 years, one ofthe most challenging intellectualproblems that comes out of com-puting is this: no matter how pow-

Before moving to Athens at age six, Christos Papadimitriou spent hisearly childhood in Lidoriki, in Fokida, Central Greece, where his fa-ther was a teacher. The town faces the scenic shore of Lake Mornou,pictured above, and he visits there often. The artificial lake did notexist when Papadimitriou was growing up.

DIMITRIS LAMPRIDIS

Dr. Christos Papadimitriou relaxes on a boat off the island of Skyros.Papadimitriou visits Greece, his birthplace, annually. His novel “Tur-ing” explores the collision of Greek thought, invention and contem-porary life. His main character, Alexandros, daydreams aboutGreece: “The sea, turquoise at the bays, elsewhere a shade of blue sosubtle that only a blind poet has been able to do it justice ... a mathe-matician had told Alexandros that the Aegean shoreline is so haunt-ingly beautiful because its fractal dimension happens to be equal tothe golden ratio.” The photo was taken by Papadimitriou’s daughter,Eirene Markenscoff-Papadimitriou, who is now studying neuro-science at the University of California, San Francisco.

Professor Christos Papadimitriou:Embracing the Past, Navigating the Future

erful our computers become, thereare certain tasks that are still be-yond them. These are archetypicalhard problems. The technical termis “NP-complete.” (Problems thatcan be solved by computer, butwithin unknown timeframes). Inthe ’50s and ’60s computer scien-tists strived to solve the world’sproblems. They came up againstcertain quandaries — such as thetraveling salesman problem. In thisproblem, you have a bunch ofcities, and you know the distancesbetween them. You want to orga-nize a tour of all the cities that min-imizes the amount of travel be-tween. The problem is, after all thedecades of working on this prob-lem, we don’t know a better way tosolve it — other than enumeratingall the possibilities.

TNH: How has the Internet af-fected computer sciences?

CP: The Internet is surely one ofthe most valuable resources — andan indispensable public good. Ithas quenched and intensified thethirst for information, for educa-tion, communication, publicity, so-cial contact. Until the late ’90s Iwas obsessed by the phenomenonof the computer. Then I realizedthere was something more com-plex and more perhaps more cru-cial for humanity. In many wayscomputer science is now like a nat-ural science, or a social science.Why? Because nobody really de-signed the Internet — it sort of ap-peared one morning. And so, wemust approach it the way neurosci-entists approach the brain, or econ-omists approach the market —with the same awe, bewildermentand humility.

TNH: Not to blow your ownhorn, but do you think Greeks areperhaps naturally suited to thiskind of large-scale, grand think-ing?

CP: Excellent point. Whoknows? Of course I’ve contemplat-ed thoughts like that. There are anamazingly large number of excel-lent computer scientists of Greekorigin working in the UnitedStates. Completely disproportion-al. Frankly, in my opinion, it has alot to do with the fact that there isa lot of talent in Greece, and theGreek universities, until recently,left a lot to be desired, especially interms of continuing study. And so alot of Greeks flooded the UnitedStates for graduate studies andhave excelled academically.

TNH: What are your feelingsabout Greece? Have you gone backto teach there?

CP: I love the state of California,I love Berkeley — but none of thesehave reached inside me thepedestal where Greece lives. It’s abitter love.

TNH: Why?CP: Because great loves are bit-

ter. There are intense and painfulaspects — if you’re in love, it’s easyto be disappointed. In the 1980s Ileft my job at MIT and tried to goback to Greece to teach. It was afascinating few years, very beauti-ful, unforgettable, but very painfuland frustrating. I ended up return-ing to California. Back then therewas a lot of corruption in the Greekacademy, and no appreciation fortechnical competence or for excel-lence. What it means to be a good,successful academic in the U.S. isdifferent from what it meant inGreece back then. This is changing— I think research in Greece hasbeen improving, but academia inGreece still has terrible, terribleproblems, unfortunately.

TNH: Why do you think thatis?

CP: The students I encounteredin the ’60s—God bless them forchoosing to interfere with politicsand work heroically against au-thoritarianism. It was a time ofchange, and of sort-of Revolution,and their presence was invaluable.But I think that the same studentsare now the most reactionary andbackwards force in Greek acade-mia. Unfortunately, nowadays stu-dent organizations in Greece arecarrying the water for corrupt po-litical parties, and oppose themuch-needed transformation ofGreek universities.

TNH: Do you think the value ofthe Internet is fully appreciated by

the public and its media?CP: I firmly believe that the In-

ternet and all that came with it ishumanity’s greatest hope. Thereare many people who cannot seebeyond the detail of pornography.The Internet is so important it is re-ally missing the point to focus onthe negative. After 9/11, howmany times have we read that AlQaeda uses the Internet? Or theway the media report, say, a mur-der-suicide of young lovers — whomet on the Internet. If they hadmet at a bus stop, would it be men-tioned? When you see it, it readslike a condemnation — an indict-ment. Perhaps the biggest thingthat’s happening right now is socialnetworks — which we startedhearing about two years ago. So,what will happen in 2020? Thereare people who tell you they know,but they’re lying.

TNH: What do you say to peo-ple who are afraid the Internet maybring harm to their children?

CP: I understand the dangers, ofcourse. I do have a pre teen-agedaughter, but I would be scared ifshe didn’t get involved in the Inter-net. It would mean that she wouldbe locked out of what is interestingand has a tomorrow. Can there betoo much gaming, too much tex-ting and you-tubing? Of coursethere can. But I believe these chil-dren will be different from us. I’mnot sure in which direction, but it’sa new world. It makes no sense to

try to stop it. TNH: Alan Turing was one of

the seminal founders of computerscience and artificial intelligencebefore the War and after. Hebrought together in his work sym-bolic logic, electrical engineering,numerical analysis and a mechani-cal vision of human thoughtprocesses. What inspired you towrite your book “Turing (a NovelAbout Computation)”?

CP: You must be familiar withthe great Greek poet Kavafis. I wasin Greece, and I had seen a film en-titled “Kavafis” — about his life —a very idiosyncratic biography. As Iwas coming out of the theatre, thisidea came to me, ‘I’ll write a bookcalled “Turing!” I was fascinated bythe idea of paying homage to an in-tellectual hero by a work of art thatbears his name. So, that night thebook was born. It is a tribute toTuring, in the form of a modernlove story that has the Internet asits locale.

TNH: Tell us about your newproject with playwright ApostolosDoxiadis: “Logicomix.”

CP: Writing “Turing” changedmy life in many ways. Now, I hangout with writers and artists, be-sides fellow nerds, and one of theconsequences is that soon after“Turing” was published, I metApostolos Doxiadis, who had pub-lished his own fascinating book“Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Con-jecture.” Almost as soon as we met,we had this crazy idea of writingthis account of a fascinating intel-lectual story known as the Founda-tions Crisis in mathematics.

TNH: What was that? CP: In the end of the 19th cen-

tury people were getting better atusing math and science to changethe world, and they decided tomake a completely impeccable as-sembly line out of this, and reallytry to understand how mathemat-ics is done, to systematize it, andultimately try to mechanize it.Some of the world’s greatest math-ematicians were consumed by thisvision. Bertrand Russell advancedit as much as he could until he be-came completely disillusioned andbitter with it, and ultimately KurtGödel in early 1930s — perhapsthe greatest scientist of the previ-ous century — proved the devas-tating ‘Incompleteness Theorem’that says there can be no foolproofmathematical system that provesall theorems. This was an incredi-ble point for science, because sud-denly scientists realized that not allproblems can be solved, that thereare limits to our abilities to under-stand and harness the world, and,in fact, these limitations are in afundamental way computational –especially apparent after Turing’s


This panel is from “Logicomix,” a graphic novel dealing with philosophers Bertrand Russell, Alfred NorthWhitehead and Kurt Gödel, written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitiou. The book, forth-coming from Bloomsbury USA, also portrays the co-authors (featured above) as they collaborate to tellthe sprawling story. Artwork by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna. Reproduced by permission of theauthors, illustrators, and Bloomsbury USA.

Apostolos Doxiadis, picturedabove, and Christos Papadimitri-ou wrote the graphic novel,“Logicomix.” Papadimitriou saysof the book: “It is really the storyof two friends, Apostolos andmyself, as they try to understandthe lives and times and ideas ofthe remarkable people who de-veloped mathematical logic – thescience of rigorous reasoning –and to come to grips with thestrange fact that so many ofthem died insane.” Continued on page 22

NIKOS KOKKALIAS


By Elaine ThomopoulosSpecial to The National Herald

Dr.J a m e sKakalios, themi ld -man-nered, soft-spoken, be-

spectacled professor (Superman indisguise?) packs a big punch in hisphysics courses. By using examplesgleaned from his encyclopedicknowledge of superheroes, datingfrom the 1930s, he grabs the atten-tion of his students, while they inturn learn about physics. The excit-ing freshman seminar he created atthe University of Minnesota,“Everything I Know about Physics ILearned by Reading Comic Books,”helped him earn two teachingawards in 2003: the Institute ofTechnology Student Board –School of Physics and AstronomyProfessor of the Year, and theCharles E. Bowers Faculty TeachingAward. It also led to his being fea-tured in magazines such as People,and his popular book, “The Physicsof Superheroes.”

POPULAR PROFESSORThis is how his students de-

scribe him: “A really funny guy, you don’t

know how helpful humor can be inunderstanding any subject untilyou have a prof like Kakalios. Hislecture might be the only one youmake a point NOT to skip, just be-cause he makes the topics that in-teresting.”

“Kakalios is the man! He mayhave his quirks, but a very smartguy.”

“Hilarious. Loves Spiderman, orcomic books in general. He doeslots of cool experiments through-out the semester.”

“Professor Kakalios is a Riot,dude knows his stuff, and makes itentertaining. You will love his con-stant reference to comic book char-acters; you know he has read themall. This guy is awesome and agreat teacher. You will enjoy hisclass.” (Ratemyprofessors.com)

COMIC BOOK FANWhen I asked him about the

role of comic books in his life, hereminisced, “I remember sittingout on the brick stoop readingcomics, not even being able toread. I picked up vocabulary. Youcould follow what was happening.”

“There was a philosophy thatcame through. They teach ethics,

right or wrong. If you have a superpower, what do you do with it? ...We all have talent. What do you dowith it? How do you decide whatyou do with it? Besides, there werevery cool explosions.”

Comic books helped shaped hisinterest in science. “There is an in-doctrination in the sciences. Thespirit. There is a high emphasis inknowing the rules of the game, cre-ative problem solving, out-thinkingthe bad guys.”

He added, “When I go to comicbook conventions, it is striking howmany people work in high tech, sci-ence, information technology. A lotof scientists got their start readingcomics. But so few wear capes.”

ESTEEMED EXPERIMENTALPHYSICIST

Kakalios has made the most ofhis talents, as a teacher, author, aswell as an experimental physicist.He became a professor at the Uni-versity of Minnesota, after receiv-ing his bachelor’s degree at CityCollege of New York and then hisPh.D. at the University of Chicago.

Kakalios said, “Upon joining theSchool of Physics and Astronomyat the University of Minnesota in1988, I have built up a researchprogram in experimental con-densed matter physics, with partic-ular emphasis on complex and dis-ordered systems. My current re-search ranges from the Nano to theNeuro.”

With the goal of developingnew material that would lead tocheaper and better solar cells, hehas been studying the optical andelectronic properties of hydro-genated amorphous silicon thinfilms containing silicon nanocrys-talline inclusions. The research elu-cidates the properties of thesemixed phase materials in order tooptimize their characteristics forsolar cell applications. He says, “Ihave helped advance the under-standing of the electronic proper-ties of amorphous silicon conduc-tors used to make the solar cells.These (conductors) are currentlyin use in solar cells, flat panel dis-plays, copiers and in many otherapplications.”

In collaboration with a profes-sor of neuroscience at the universi-ty, A. David Redish, he is conduct-ing investigations of voltage fluctu-ations recorded from the brains ofawake, behaving rats. This has ledto the identification of a coherent

oscillation in the straitum whichmay have implication for our un-derstanding of Parkinson’s Disease.I asked him to explain the experi-ment, “You stick an electrode in,and you record the voltages thatare coming from all the neuronsthat are firing. What you will see istotal chaos in the voltages and sud-denly you will record a very coher-ent oscillation or sign wave thatcomes through and will suddenlydisappear. Nobody understandswhat this is yet. Some people thingit is very important; other people

think not so much. It is like theWild West. Lot of fun from a scien-cific point of view. It’s at the fore-front of science. At this stage, thereis so much that is not understoodso it makes it a very exciting timefor scientists.

FAMILY MANFamily plays an important role

in Kalalios’ life. His paternal grand-father, George, and grandmother,Eva Giannoulis, immigrated toAmerica from Greece. His yiayiacame from a family of about 12children and emigrated from Cala-

mata about 80 years ago when shewas 16 years old. Kakalios reportedthat she did not know anybodywhen she came to America andworked as a seamstress. His grand-father worked as a restaurant chef.They raised their two boys in theDitmars neighborhood, which waslike “little Greece.”

His father, Nicholas, past presi-dent of the Greek cabdrivers asso-ciation, and mother, Augusta,a sec-ond generation Latvian, broughtup their two boys in the Woodsideneighborhood of New York, wherethe TV series “All in the Family”was supposed to have taken place.

When I asked him to tell meabout those in his family who influ-enced him, he responded: “My par-ents. My father. Got my work ethicfrom him. My mother – I got theLatvian strong work ethic from her.Books and literature were impor-tant to her. We were always goingto public library. She was a reader.Books were always around thehouse. Also important was my fa-ther’s brother, (Stanley), principaland district superintendent in theNew York City schools. Educationwas highly regarded in my family.”

He and his wife Therese have al-so stressed the importance of edu-cation in their own family. Thomasjust started University of Chicago,his parents’ alma mater. His daugh-ter Laura is a senior in high school,and David is in the ninth grade. Re-garding his children, he quips,“That’s why I am an expert onnoise and disordered systems.”

In my contact with him,Kakalios interspersed the seriouswith the humorous. In an email herelated: “I'm off with my family todrive my oldest son off to college.(I can't be that old! There must besome slip in the space-time contin-uum!).”

He got serious when I askedhim, “What are your accomplish-ments?” He didn’t respond with alist of his myriad accomplishmentsbut with his goals, “I try to be agood husband and father, goodteacher and scientist.”

AUTHOR OF “PHYSICS OF SUPERHEROES”

Kakalios is best known to thegeneral public for “The Physics ofSuperheroes.” In this book, which Ireviewed for the Greek Circle Mag-azine, he demonstrates his “Super-man” power as a gifted author. Heknocked out the “afraid of science

Professor James Kakalios:Superman in Disguise

Dr. James Kakalios, professor at the School of Physics and Astronomyat the University of Minnesota, has built up a research program inexperimental condensed matter physics at the university. His best-selling book, "The Physics of Superheroes," developed out of a popu-lar and exciting freshman seminar he created: "Everything I KnowAbout Physics I Learned By Reading Comic Books.”

TOM FOLEY/UNIV. OF MINNESOTA


and math” trait in me and with hu-mor and wit taught me how every-day things like the human body,automobile airbags, transistors,television, microwave ovens anddimpled golf balls work.

Within this easy-to-read volumehe covers Newton’s laws of motion,conservation of energy, thermody-namics, electricity and magnetism,quantum mechanics, solid-statephysics, and much more.

He introduces “other-world”phenomenon as the Big-Bang theo-ry, time travel, and parallel uni-verses. Of the latter he notes, “Themany worlds model has beenlocked in the metaphoric attic untilvery recently.” He was never taughtthis model in school but discoveredit by accident when as a graduatestudent he came across a copy of“The Many-Worlds Interpretationsof Quantum Mechanics.” He in-forms us that today’s string theo-rists support this model.

Kakalios ventures into answer-ing questions that illustrate New-ton’s Laws of Motion. One suchquestion: How was Superman ableto “leap tall building in a singlebound”? The answer: He was bornon Krypton, which theoreticallyhad a gravitational pull 15 timesmore than of Earth. His strongerbones and muscles enabled him toaccomplish this feat.

He also answers the queryabout what made Krypton explode:a super-dense and unstable materi-al like a neutron star at its core. Hespeaks of the creators of Super-man, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster,with admiration, “These teenagersfrom Cleveland, Ohio, either hadan understanding of astrophysicsand quantum mechanics that ex-ceeded that of many contemporaryphysics professors in 1938, or theywere very lucky guessers.”

In the section called “The DayGwen Stacy Died: Impulse and Mo-mentum,” he explores whether ornot the web Spiderman used to tryto save his girlfriend when she washurled from the Washington Bridgeby the Green Goblin actually killedher instead. Answer: it did.

Whether or not you are a comicbook fan or not, the comichero/heroine examples give you achuckle and teach a lesson. Takethe example of Ant-Man, who is astiny as an ant, yet maintains thestrength of a normal size human.How does he escape from the vacu-um bag the villain has sucked himinto? On the way to the answer anexplanation is given about levers,torque and rotation and the won-der of the human body. Kakaliosnotes, “Our strength comes fromour muscles and skeletal structurethat make up a series of intercon-necting levers.” After explaining

“The Physics of Superheroes”: Within this easy-to-read volume James Kakalios covers Newton’s laws of motion, conservation of energy, ther-modynamics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, and much more. Continued on page 23


By Artemis LeontisSpecial to The National Herald

Ruins from burned build-ings of entirely differenteras have touched thelife of Dr. Traianos Ga-gos, professor of Greek

and papyrology at the University ofMichigan, in important ways.

In the early 1940s during WorldWar II, the Nazi occupying forcesburned his paternal home in Karpi,a village of Kilkis northwest ofThessaloniki. The destruction camein retaliation for his grandfather’sparticipation in the Resistancemovement. Having lost his home,Gagos’ father lived at the mercy ofothers. He had to flee the countryat the end of the Greek Civil War in1949 because the family was iden-tified with the left during the resis-

tance. When he returned from ex-ile, marriage stigmatized his newbride, who was denied permissionto emigrate to Germany to work.The young Traianos felt the effectsof his parents’ shaky political andeconomic position from his earlyexistence. The family lived onwhatever it could cultivate on eight“stremmata” (about 8000 squaremeters). Little Traianos startedworking in the tobacco fields whenhe was five. He remembers hismother and aunt taking the placeof a dead horse behind the plow.He learned early on how hard, in-secure and unfair life can be, anddetermined to carve a differentpath for himself.

Around the turn of the seventhcentury A.D., more than 1300years before the Gagos family’svery consequential loss, a room ad-

jacent to the Byzantine Church ofPetra, Jordan burned down. It waspart of the church’s storage facili-ties where the archdeacon kept hispersonal papers and some churchdocuments. The charred effects ofthat room were about 130 flat-tened, carbonized scrolls. Thesehand-inscribed “papyri,” producedfrom the fibrous papyrus plant ofthe Nile Delta (the English “paper”derives from the Greek “papyros”),remained buried underground un-til their chance discovery in De-cember 1993. In this case, Petra’sloss was Gagos’ gain. He has builthis reputation on deciphering thecarbonized Petra Papyri.

Gagos is a trained papyrologist.This means that he works to con-serve, decipher, and interpret “pa-pyri,” ancient literature preservedon papyrus manuscripts from theGreco-Roman world. He holds thepositions of professor of Greek andpapyrology in the University ofMichigan Department of ClassicalStudies, archivist of papyrology inthe Graduate Library, and directorof the Advanced Papyrological In-formation System a worldwide col-lections-based repository hostingimages and information about pa-pyrological materials.

Gagos reached the top of hisfield through years of hard work —and sacrifice by his parents. Whenhis mother’s emigration requestwas denied, the family became in-ternal migrants, moving to Thessa-loniki in 1970 and laboring so thatTraianos and his sister, Eleni, couldcontinue their studies beyond ele-mentary school. His parents sentTraianos to Germany in 1976 tovisit cousins and learn some Ger-man. In 1978 Traianos gained en-try to the University of Ioanninaand studied philology, the scienceof language and literature with aspecial focus on classical Greek andLatin texts. He was exposed to pa-pyrology in his fourth year, andfound he could easily read its bro-ken bits of difficult, ancient hand-writing.

In fact, he liked deciphering pa-pyri’s coded language. It was likebringing the dead back to life. InGagos’ eyes, papyrology is a bridgenot only between disciplines — itcombines archaeology’s work ofexcavation and conservation withphilology’s reading and interpret-ing texts. “It’s a bridge betweenpast and present,” he says. The pa-

pyrologist’s decipherings bringreaders face to face with the con-tingencies of human activities. Thisis true especially in documentarypapyri. For example, P. Mich. inv.6922, a Greek text from around537A.D. that professor Gagos edit-ed, is a deed settling a dispute overa piece of land. Poor AureliosNikantinoos inherited from his par-ents not the land he was expecting

but their liability when they usedthe land to secure a loan. The prop-erty went to Nikantinoos’ nephewand nieces, who sold it to AureliosPhoibammon and his wife AureliaAnastasia. So Nikantinoos foundhimself paying for land he did notown and a debt that was not his,while Phoibammon and Anastasiawere enjoying both the propertyand Nikantinoos’ mortgage pay-

Traianos Gagos:Breathing New Life into Charred Ruins

Dr. Traianos Gagos holds a burnt Petra papyrus, set between glass.The photograph was taken at the American Center for Oriental Re-search, where he conducts his research. More than 1300 years ago, astorage facility adjacent to the Byzantine Church of Petra, Jordanburned down. The charred effects of that room were about 130 flat-tened, carbonized scrolls. These hand-inscribed papyri, producedfrom the fibrous papyrus plant of the Nile Delta, remained buried un-derground until their chance discovery in December 1993. Gagos hasbuilt his reputation on deciphering the carbonized Petra papyri.

ELAINE TSANGARIDES

Here is a detail from the Petra Papyri, volume 1, text #5, a request fortransfer of taxation responsibility, dating from 538 CE. It is a multi-spectral digitized image produced by Steven W. Booras and Gene A.Ware, Institute for the Study and Preservations of Ancient ReligiousTexts, Brigham Young University.


ments. In this scrap of ancient pa-per the entire scene comes to life:the names, troubles, pain, adviceof mediators and finally the settle-ment. (You can see an image of thepapyrus and read Gagos’ transla-tion by searching “6922” onhttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/im-age/image-idx?c=apis.)

No matter how mundane theirsubject, papyri seem to preservethe sense of human lives hangingby a thread. Perhaps Gagos’ enthu-siasm for papyrology found fuel inhis student job working in a law of-fice. From his direct experiencewatching lawyers and their clients’doing everything they could totwist the law in their favor, hecould smell the flesh and bloodhidden between the lines of an-cient legal contracts.

“You have a gift,” Gagos’ profes-sor, Manolis Papathomopoulos, de-clared. He helped Gagos secureone of two doctoral fellowship of-fered in 1984 for Greek studentswishing to study papyrologyabroad. At the University ofDurham in England, Traianos com-pleted his Ph.D. with DavidThomas in 35 months, defendinghis thesis on Nov. 17, 1987.

The early 1980s were a turningpoint for papyrology. Duke Univer-sity began to create the first search-able electronic databank of docu-mentary papyri. This was the be-ginning of the new science of papy-rology using modern technology.Eventually the electronic corpuswould include all published Greekand Latin texts found on papyri, os-traka (broken pieces of ancientpottery with writing scratched ontheir surface) or wooden tablets.Currently the databank containsover 5 million words and nearly500 volumes.

In 1988 the University of Michi-gan announced the position ofproofreader for the Duke databank.Gagos applied and got the job. Hiscareer did not follow a straight,easy path. He was proofreader from1988-1990. During a hiatus infunding in 1990-92 he introducedmodern Greek language instructionat U-M, at the suggestion of Prof.Ludwig Koenen, a fellow papyrolo-gist, then chair of the Departmentof Classical Studies at U-M. He hadthe idea that a good department ofclassics should represent the fullrange of Greek, from Homer to itsyoungest living speakers. Good en-rollments were the condition forModern Greek’s continuation andGagos managed this too, passing ona healthy program to his succes-sors. From 1991 to 1995 he waslecturer in Modern Greek and asso-ciate archivist of the Papyrus Col-lection at the U-M Graduate Li-brary. He became full archivist in1995, associate professor in 1999,and full professor in 2008.

Throughout the academic yearGagos balances a dizzying numberof time-consuming activities:teaching, advising, supervising un-dergraduate honors theses andPh.D. dissertations, overseeing andresearching U-M’s very significantPapyrus Collection, training staff,writing grants and reaching out tothe broader community by givinglectures, interviews, and tours.

A big part of his work involvesoverseeing the Michigan portion ofthe Advanced Papyrological Infor-mation System. APIS expands theDuke databank to produce a virtuallibrary of digital images and cata-logue records from many universi-ty collections. Between 1991 and1995 Professor Gagos led this ex-pansion by digitizing the MichiganPapyrus collection and putting iton the World Wide Web. His hopethat other universities would joinU-M eventually materialized. Ga-gos holds a very deep political be-lief in democracy, and he appliesthis to his academic work. For thepast 20 years, he has been workingtirelessly to make papyrus frag-ments widely accessible. He wishesto put the sources of knowledge in-to everyone’s hands. In fact, todayanyone can search the APIS web-site to get a close view of theseonce buried treasures. And he hastaken the work of bringing papyrito mass audiences even further.

“My real efforts at popularizing pa-pyrology are to be found in ourown U-M webpages, where I haveoverseen the production of severalmodular exhibits for general audi-ences and K-12 education”(www.lib.umich.edu/pap).

He devotes his summers to re-search on the Petra papyri in Am-man, Jordan. Gagos first went toPetra in 1995 on a National En-dowment for Humanities grantwith Professor Koenen so that theycould begin conserving and deci-phering the Petra Papyri. He tookto Petra like a fish to water or,more aptly, since Gagos is ethnical-ly Vlach, like a nomad to a cara-van-route city. Inhabited since pre-historic times, Petra (from theGreek word “petra,” rock) is acrossroads. It lies in a basin amongthe mountains east of the large val-ley that runs from the Dead Sea tothe Gulf of Aqaba and connectsEgypt, Syria, and Arabia. TheNabateans, a nomadic tribe, madeit their capital in the second centu-ry B.C., and the city flourished asan economic and religious centrein the Roman and early Byzantineperiods for several centuries, pri-marily because of its place in thelong distance trade in spices andaromatics. Half-built, half-carvedinto sandstone cliffs, it blendedEastern traditions and Hellenisticarchitecture. By the late sixth and

early seventh century, however, theyears when the Byzantine Churchcollapsed and burned, Petra was indecline after several shatteringearthquakes and changes in over-land trade routes.

Yet Petra’s carbonized papyrifound in the annex of the burnedByzantine Church, which Gagoshas been studying now for 13years, belie the sense of isolation.“Here are texts dated to the periodof 537-94, when Petra was part ofthe Byzantine Empire. They showthe people of Petra making con-tacts outside their narrowprovince. They were attending tothe Imperial oaths of Justinian;they were looking to Constantino-ple and had distinguished scholarsresiding in Gaza. And their lan-guage is an interesting mixture.There are texts in Greek with Latinterms; buildings and land plots list-ed in Greek but combining Arama-ic and Arabic. Place names are ofSemitic origins, but personalnames are Romanized. Theprovince is trying to make itself rel-evant to the Empire.”

Reading the Petra Papyri pre-sents interpretive as well as techni-cal problems. The technical chal-lenge derives from the papyri’sburned, compressed state. Howdoes one take apart charred re-mains without destroying everytrace? Carbonized papyri (the most

famous are the Herculaneum pa-pyri, discovered in a Roman villaburied by ash during the eruptionof Mt. Vesuvius in 79A.D.) have acharcoal-like, blackened appear-ance. They are usually heavily dam-aged. However, the process of car-bonization also protects them fromfuture decay. With the help of mod-ern multispectral imaging tech-niques, papyrologists are learningto read the contents without takingthe scrolls apart. The interpretivechallenges are certainly equal tothe technical ones. The Petra Papyriare the only written pages in anotherwise blank history book forthe city and the region. How doesone make sense of them?

Gagos has learned from life toturn a handicap into an advantage.What Petra offers is a great archae-ological context. Most ancient pa-pyri have lost the context of theirproduction and transmission bythe time they reach scholars’hands, but the Petra Papyri werefound “in situ.”

In the texts, which preserve ti-tles and inscriptions from 500years ago, Gagos hears the voicesof people telling him they are notprovincial; they are from a differ-ent place. He hears the anxiety ofpeople in the margins who are say-ing, “What’s going on out there?Do we matter? Are we a part ofthis?” Gagos works closely with ar-chaeologists as he tries to grasp theperspective on life in the provincesin late antiquity. He is currentlyworking toward a publication ofthe papyri that will make both thetexts and their context available forfuture scholars.

Where does he go when hewants to get away? His vacationdays are just a handful, but Gagosknows the destination. In 1967 hisparents began building on the siteof the destroyed house in Karpi.They completed the house in the1980s, and, since their retirement,spend summers there, winters inThessaloniki. Gagos manages tovisit Greece each summer. Whenhe does, he kicks back his heels fora few days in the family home,built on the charred ruins of thehouse the Nazis burned.

Dr. Artemis Leontis is associateprofessor of Modern Greek at theUniversity of Michigan. Herbooks include “Topographies ofHellenism: Mapping the Home-land” (Cornell 1994), “Greece: ATraveler’s Literary Companion”(Whereabouts 1997), “…whatthese Ithakas Mean: Readings inCavafy” (ELIA 2002), and “Cul-ture and Customs of Greece”(Greenwood, forthcoming). Forthe past three years, she hasbeen creating an archive of inter-views with Greek American intel-lectuals, artists and scientists.

Dr. Traianos Gagos is at Petra, Jordan, where the Petra papyri were discovered in 1993. He travels to Jor-dan each summer to research the Petra papyri, which are more than 1300 years old. Gagos, a trained pa-pyrologist, works to conserve, decipher, and interpret papyri, ancient manuscripts from the Greco-Ro-man world.

TERRENCE SZYMANSKI


By John P. PsiharisSpecial to The National Herald

Dr.Leda Cos-mides, oftenin concertwith herpartner and

husband, anthropologist Dr. JohnTooby, revolutionized the field ofpsychology through groundbreak-ing research into the emergingfield of evolutionary psychology.Her work has been internationallyrecognized and her honors havebeen many.

She has traveled the globe tospread the word about evolution-ary psychology, a field that she pio-neered and helped to bring to theforefront of modern psychology.Japan was just her latest destina-tion. While there this past summer,Cosmides participated in severalhuman behavior and evolutionmeetings. She met with Japanesecolleagues who shared her passionfor evolutionary psychology. Cos-mides has given lectures through-out the United States, as well asLondon, Edinburgh, Rio deJaneiro, Berlin, Munich, Aarhus,Mexico City, Vancouver, Montrealand Sao Paulo.

She has traveled to Greece, theancestral home of her mother’sfamily. They come from a villagenear Tripoli in the Peloponnesusregion of Greece. Her maternalgrandfather came to the UnitedStates at age 12. He worked on therailroads and started a neighbor-hood grocery store. The store, lo-cated on Chicago’s north side, wasa precursor to today’s supermar-kets, featuring products of multiplevendors, a concept that was notcommon in that era. As a shop-keeper, he was a target of theft andattempted mafia shakedowns,which he resisted. Eventually hewent back to his village in Greeceto find a wife.

Her father’s family came fromTurkey. Her paternal grandfathercame from Corlu and her paternalgrandmother from Constantinople.Her paternal grandfather fledTurkey to avoid persecution. Hesettled in West Virginia and laterPittsburgh. He corresponded bymail with his soon-to-be wife anddid not meet her until the day oftheir marriage.

Born in Philadelphia in 1957,Cosmides moved to a town near

Bethesda, Maryland at the age oftwo. Her father, an accomplishedpharmacologist, had accepted aposition at the National Institute ofHealth, eventually becoming asso-ciate director of the National Li-brary of Medicine. Prior to his gov-ernment service, he helped inventstelazine, while working for Smith,Kline and French. The pill is stillused today to treat schizophrenia.As an inventor of the pill, he wasinvited to suggest a name for thenew drug. He named it in honor ofhis favorite cousin, Stella. At thattime, Cosmides recalls, the Freudi-ans considered psychopharmacolo-gy an anathema for mental illness.“It’s remarkable that it is still inuse. It is still an effective drug,”says Cosmides.

Her interest in psychology cameearly in high school, where she wasa good student who excelled atmath and science. But she wasworried about the state of theworld: “If you are a child in the latesixties, you grow up with war, as-sassinations, demonstrations andintergenerational conflict. Fromour backyard, you could see thesmoke from Washington burningwhen Martin Luther King waskilled. Every demonstration, forevery cause, was local news be-

cause we lived in a suburb of Wash-ington D.C. The world seemed likea mess, and I thought there mustbe better ways for people to live.”But she also thought that ideologyalone could not tell you what these

better ways might be. Cosmidescontinued, “It felt like every insti-tution and tradition was being up-rooted and discarded, sometimesfor good reasons, but usually with-out any evidence that the alterna-

tives being proposed would pro-duce the utopias that people envi-sioned. I soon realized that, if youwant to improve society, you firstneed to understand human nature.Otherwise, you are likely to makethings worse rather than better.”

The creative individualism ofstudents at Harvard University at-tracted Cosmides to enroll in theirundergraduate program. “When Ivisited Harvard, I met people whowere doing interesting and excitingthings on their own initiative —very different from other schools,where most students just did whatthey were told.” “The field of evo-lutionary psychology did not existat that time. But after my freshmanyear, I discovered that Harvard wasa hot bed of research into evolutionand behavior.”

As a sophomore, Cosmides metRobert L. Trivers, an associate pro-fessor at Harvard and a major fig-ure in the field of evolutionary bi-ology. “I learned a lot of my evolu-tionary biology from him,” saysCosmides. She joined a group oflike-minded scholars who met reg-ularly at the home of Irven DeVore,a professor of anthropology at Har-vard. “There was an intellectualrevolution going on, and Irv De-Vore’s living room was its head-quarters,” she said. So Cosmidesstayed at Harvard for graduateschool in cognitive psychology. Al-though Harvard’s psychology facul-ty at that time were mostly hostileto evolutionary approaches to theirfield, Cosmides found support andcamaraderie from the primatolo-gists, anthropologists, and evolu-tionary biologists in DeVore’s“Simian Seminar”.

It was at this time that Cos-mides met John Tooby a graduatestudent in biological anthropologyat Harvard. The two would not on-ly form a personal bond throughmarriage but would also go on tocollaborate professionally. “We doeverything together. All of ourwork is collaborative,” explainsCosmides. “There is no competi-tion. What is good for John is goodfor me. We think very similarlywhich is helpful.”

“At that time, most psycholo-gists thought that the human mindis a blank slate,” Cosmides remem-bers. Psychology was dominated bythe philosophy of B. F. Skinner, aleading psychologist of his timeand a professor of psychology at

Leda Cosmides:A Revolutionary Evolutionist

Dr. Leda Cosmides receives the National Institutes of Health Pioneer Award from Elias Zarhouni, NIH Di-rector in 2005. Cosmides was one of 13 recipients from over 800 nominees.

COURTESY OF LEDA COSMIDES

Dr. Leda Cosmides receives the American Association for the Ad-vancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research from Dr.Richard Atkinson, president of AAAS, in 1989.



Harvard University. Skinner was a“radical behaviorist” who thoughtthe brain had two, and only two,laws of learning, based on rewardand punishment. “By rewarding orpunishing people in just the rightway, he thought you could elicitany behavior you wanted — hethought you could make a womanwant to nurse another woman’schild as much as her own, or makea man delighted to find his wifehaving sex with another man,”Cosmides explains.

Evolutionary psychology isbased on the notion that evolutionapplies as much to the brain as itdoes to other organs in the body.Cosmides explains, “When youlook at other organs of the body,you find specializations: the heartis well-designed for pumpingblood, the liver for detoxifying poi-sons — each was engineered bynatural selection to solve a particu-lar problem very well.” To surviveand reproduce, “our hunter-gath-erer ancestors had to solve manydifferent kinds of problems, eachof which required programs thatprocess information in a preciseway.” For instance, our mindsevolved some programs specializedfor acquiring language, others foravoiding incest, for choosingmates, for avoiding predators, forcooperating with others, and so on.

Cosmides explains, “Taking seri-ously the idea that the brain con-tains a collection of programs, eachof which was designed by naturalselection to solve a different adap-tive problem, changes your scien-tific intuitions. Our ancestors werehunters and gatherers who had tobe able to find food, hunt, attractfertile mates, raise children, coop-erate with others in their socialgroup, help their close relatives,and resist aggression. They had tolearn what could eat them andwhat they could eat.” Cosmidescompares the mind to a personalcomputer. “Computers have differ-ent programs; each specialized forsolving a different problem. For ex-ample, Excel is well-designed fordoing spreadsheets and Word forwriting, but the very propertiesthat make them good at their tasksmake them bad at others — youwould not want to write articles inExcel or do spreadsheets in Word.”

While defining the topic of herthesis at Harvard, Cosmides en-countered challenges. “Nobody inmy department was evolutionary.Nobody knew what it would looklike to take an evolutionary ap-proach to cognition. I had to ex-plain what the evolutionary ap-proach was and why it was impor-tant.” Some twenty years later, thelist of honors and awards that Cos-mides has achieved illustrates thesuccess she has had in advocatingthis new approach.

Her honors include: Recipientof the National Institutes of HealthDirector’s Pioneer Award; aGuggenheim Fellowship, the Amer-ican Association for the Advance-ment of Science Prize for Behav-ioral Science Research, and theAmerican Psychological Associa-tion’s Distinguished ScientificAward. She has authored or edited,often in collaboration with Tooby,five books and over eighty articlesin various scientific journals. Shehas organized or spoken at numer-ous conferences, seminars andsymposiums.

Armed with a doctorate degreein cognitive psychology, Cosmidesinterviewed at universitiesthroughout the country. “Therewere many Ph.D.s and few jobs,”recalls Cosmides. “I was very con-troversial for a period of five or sixyears. I was interviewed for manyjobs, but academic selection isbased on group consensus, and mytaking an evolutionary approachwould always enrage at least oneor two people.” She continued:“My not being hired right awayturned out to be good for the field.In academic departments, the onetalk everyone shows up for is a jobtalk. So the fact that I was givingjob talks all over the country meantmany more people were hearingabout evolutionary psychologythan would have if I had beenhired right away!”

One university was not afraid ofevolutionary psychology, the Uni-versity of California at Santa Bar-

bara. Tooby was invited to join thefaculty there in 1990, and Cos-mides in 1991. “There were not alot of academic jobs available. Wewere just looking to be employedin the same city. This was heaven.We were very happy to come hereand delighted that we ended up atthe same university. We luckedout.” In 2000, she was elevated tofull professor status within the De-partment of Psychology.

Inspired by this newfound acad-emic support, Cosmides and Toobywould go on to co-found and co-di-rect the Center for EvolutionaryPsychology at UCSB. Created in1994, the Center is, as Cosmidesdescribes it “a clearinghouse for re-search and training in evolutionarypsychology.” “Human nature iscentral to everything, so scholarsfrom many fields come to the Cen-ter. It is great for our students,”Cosmides added.

“People who are interested inevolutionary psychology can be indifferent academic departmentssuch as psychology, biology, educa-tion, anthropology or medicine.We meet weekly to design researchwith our graduate students andwith visitors from other universi-ties who come here on sabbatical.Grad students and professors havecome from Denmark, Belgium,England, France and throughoutthe US,” Cosmides explained.

A focus of the Center has beenits site in the Ecuadorian Amazon.The site has provided the ideal set-ting for cross-cultural experiments.Cosmides explains, “It is differentin as many ways as possible fromlife in the U.S. The people therelive among kin in tiny villages; theyget all of their food by foraging andgardening; they believe in witch-craft; and have little outside con-tact. It is similar in some ways tothe conditions in which humansevolved. If you think a program isuniversal in our species, this is agood place to test for its presence.”

Although Cosmides does notspeak Greek, she speaks fondly ofher Hellenic heritage. She attributesmuch of Greek American success toeducation. Cosmides stated “Eco-nomic success depends on educa-tion. And among Greeks at all levelsof society, education is valued.”

Cosmides views the future ofthe “omogenia” as a challengingtime. She remembers: “At my par-ents’ church in Bethesda, everyonehad a Greek name. Now, at theGreek church in Santa Barbara, aminority have Greek names.” Shecontinues: “It’s going to be hard forthe Greek community to maintainan identity. I’m not saying itshouldn’t. But it is going to be diffi-cult as the community becomesless and less ethnically Greek.”

Leda Cosmides and John Tooby are with her parents, George and Nasia Cosmides, in 2006.

Dr. Leda Cosmides and her husband, Dr. John Tooby, are with theirdaughter, Nike Tooby Cosmides, in Kyoto, Japan during the HumanBehavior and Evolution Society meetings, June, 2008.



Continued on page 23


By Mark Lardas Special to The National Herald

Dr.M e n a sKafatos is aman wholooks forconnections.

For him, the world consists of a se-ries of puzzles to be solved. He hasworked to solve the mysteries asso-ciated with the physics of blackholes, structure of information,philosophy of physics and myster-ies of the global environment.

It is the interconnections be-tween things that most fascinateshim. It is almost as if he is findingthe path through a maze -- a scien-tific version of the Labyrinth.

It may be due to his heritage.Kafatos, born in 1945, grew up inpost-war Crete. The Kafatos familyhas been in Crete a long time, al-though perhaps not since the timeof Minos. Menas Kafatos is proudof his heritage. “It is not a commonname, but we are one of the oldestfamilies in Crete,” he states.

His family has an uncommonability for producing scientists. Hisoldest brother, Fotis, is now an in-ternationally renowned biologist,and a cousin, Anthony Kafatos isknown for his work in nutrition inGreece and the United States.

At a time when Crete was large-ly rural, Kafatos lived in Iraklion,Crete’s largest city. He has fondmemories of those days. “We werea closely knit family.”

He cites his family as the majorinfluences in his life. “My father,Kostas Kafatos, always encouragedme to seek my full potential, workhard and spread good around me.”

His father, a senior civil servant,worked for the Ministry of Agricul-ture. He was as much a scientist asa bureaucrat. In the United States,Kafatos’ father would be describedas a county agricultural agent, ad-vising farmers on crop cultivationand agricultural science. Kostas’territory covered the entire island,however, and before he retired hehad become the agricultural in-spector general for Crete.

What impressed Kafatos themost about his father? “His hon-esty. Back then, government work-ers had a reputation for corruption.Not my father. He never tookbribes. Money was tight when Igrew up, but he taught me the val-ue of hard work and honesty.”

Another major influence wasUncle George Xiroudakis, a mathe-matician. “My uncle instilled in mefascination with mathematics andthe sciences.”

He also credits his brothers andmother with shaping him. “My twoolder brothers, Anthony and Fotis,always protected me and guidedme. And last but not least, mymother Eleni, who showed me thevalue of good family, the greatnessof tradition and values, and the im-portance of loving people aroundus.”

In his early teens, Kafatos made

a decision that changed his life. “Iwas always able to draw and paint.For many years, my immediatefamily thought I would go into art.When I was 14, I asked to talk tomy dad and told him that I hadmade a decision to study astrono-my. He, as always, encouraged mewith my decision and told me hewould support me in that deci-sion.”

Kafatos graduated from a topIraklion high school in 1965 andcame to the United States to fur-ther his education. He received aB.S. in physics from Cornell, one ofthe most technical of the IvyLeague colleges. From there, hewas off to MIT for postgraduatestudies, where he earned a Ph.D. inphysics.

Along the way, he met and mar-ried his first wife. The marriageeventually fell apart, but not beforeproducing three sons. Now grown,watching them as adults givesMenas Kafatos greater satisfactionthan his many professional accom-plishments. “None of them fol-lowed me into the sciences. Myoldest son Lefteris is a translatorand language tutor in California,fluent in Japanese and with goodmastering of Greek. My second sonStefanos is a cinematographer andphotography executive director oftelevision programs. My youngestone Alexios is in retailing.”

After receiving his doctorate in1972, he moved to University ofColorado, Boulder, to do post-doc-torate work in astrophysics. After ayear there, he went to NASA’s God-dard Space Flight Center in Green-belt Maryland, where he pursuedresearch for two years on a Nation-al Research Council fellowship.

In 1975 he became an assistantprofessor in physics at George Ma-son University, where he spent thenext 33 years. At the time, he wasstudying physics associated withblack holes – gravitational singu-larities caused by the collapse ofstars. Much of his early work ex-panded our knowledge of theprocesses within some of thestrangest points in our universe.

At George Mason Kafatos reallydemonstrated his aptitude at inter-disciplinary science. Refusing to bepigeonholed in astronomy and as-trophysics, he began branchingout.

In the 1990s, Kafatos collabo-rated with another professor atGeorge Mason, Dr. Robert Nadeau,to work out a general philosophyof physics. Nadeau was a philoso-pher, not a physicist. The two of

them attempted to reunite the twoancient disciplines. Their effortsculminated in two books: “TheNon-Local Universe: The NewPhysics and Matters of the Mind” in1990 and “The Conscious Uni-verse: Parts and Wholes in PhysicalReality” in 1999.

The result was intriguing andsurprising. Some critics called theconcepts presented Zen-like. Per-haps a more fitting analogy wouldbe Platonic. It was a 20th centuryversion of Plato’s allegory of thecave.

Infomatics also captured his at-tention. Infomatics is the study ofthe science of information and da-ta, including information process-ing, large data set analysis and en-gineering of information systems.The ability to process information,to organize facts and obtain rela-tionships between things is critical

is physics. It also underlies all sci-entific exploration. Kafatos becameaware of the importance of info-matics as a result of his work in as-trophysics.

Kafatos helped found the Insti-tute of Computational Sciencesand Informatics at George Masonto study computational sciencewhich focuses on modeling andsimulations and infomatics. The In-stitute, which later became theSchool of Computational Sciences,developed an international reputa-tion, attracting students fromaround the world. Kafatos servedas dean of that school from 2002through 2006.

Kafatos moved further still fromastrophysics, into space and Earthobservations in general, when hehelped found the Center for EarthObservation and Space Research(CEOSR) in 1995 within the

Menas Kafatos: Solving the Labyrinth

Dr. Menas Kafatos is vice chancellor for special projects; director,Center of Excellence in Applied, Computational and FundamentalScience; and professor, Department of Physics, Computational Sci-ence and Engineering at Schmid College of Science at Chapman Uni-versity, Orange, CA.

Menas Kafatos has deep roots in Crete. This is a photo of the Kafatosfamily in Rethymnon, Crete, around 1910. In the back row areKafatos’ uncles and aunts: (left to right) Despina, George, Athenaand Nicholas. In the front row: (left to right) are his maternal grand-mother Chrysi, father Constantine (standing), paternal grandfatherAnthony, paternal grandmother, Heraclea, and aunt Evangelista (ongrandmother’s knee).

PHOTOS: COURTESY OF MENAS KAFATOS


School of Computational Sciences.Using satellites observations of theEarth, and combining the datagathered from orbital sensors withearth systems, information tech-nologies, and innovative computa-tional algorithm, the Center con-

ducts research to enhance our un-derstanding of Earth, its atmos-phere, and space immediatelyaround the Earth. It focuses inter-disciplinary sciences on the studyof the Earth. Kafatos serves as thefirst director of CEOSR.

Since then he has focused onEarth observation, researching theconnections between regional haz-ards and climate change. Today hespends much of his time on thistopic, speaking about environmen-tal issues throughout the world.“People talk about global warm-ing,” Kafatos states, “but what theydo not realize is that the effects arefelt locally.” He is one of the mostinfluential internationally knownvoices on the impacts of global cli-mate change.

He has added a new interest inhis study of natural hazards: earth-quakes. “Obviously, earthquakesare not caused by climate change,”Kafatos says, “but the impact of anearthquake can be just as devastat-ing as a major forest fire or hurri-cane.” To further this new ambitionKafatos has taken a new position,at Chapman University in Orange,California, where he will pursue in-ternational collaborations, build-ing computational science and pro-jects on global change. He will bethe vice chancellor for special pro-jects as well as director of theChapman's new Center for Excel-lence in Applied, Computationaland Fundamental Science. He an-ticipates working closely with Cali-fornia agencies and private donorsto pursue work that is environmen-tally important to society.

His personal life took a renewedturn when he married his secondwife, Susan Yang, in 2006. A nativeKorean and a scientist herself, anexpert in neuroscience and compu-tational biosciences, she is nowemployed at Chapman Universityand will lead international rela-tionships in the sciences. Together,they have found appreciation ofeach other’s native country, Greeceand South Korea, and their extend-ed families, while living in theiradopted country, the United States.

The National Herald askedKafatos several questions.

TNH: Your professional inter-ests include astrophysics, Earth ob-servation and computers. Theyseem loosely linked. How did youget involved in so many differenttechnical areas?

MK: Remember, I always seeknew challenges. One thing that al-ways bothered me was the tenden-cy of many scientists to stick withone field and just work in, andeventually even die in it! I wantedto find the common elements indifferent scientific fields. To proveto myself, my own satisfaction, thatI could excel in more than onefield. Even though I had achievedcertain name in astrophysics, par-ticularly in black hole astrophysics,I started working in earth systemscience, and soon enough Iachieved a name in that field aswell. As for computational science,I developed it because it is the way

of the future in science, an umbrel-la that ties different scientific fieldstogether.

TNH: It is unusual for scien-tists to write books for a broad au-dience. You have done this severaltimes. Why, and to what do you at-tribute your talents in communica-tions?

MK: Maybe it is due to my artis-tic bend. I love books, and I love towrite. Maybe it is the challenge ofdoing what most scientists cannot(or more likely will not) do. But Ithink it is the inner need to do andspread good around me, what my

dad taught me from early on.Remember what I said about

challenges. I always felt that it isnot the fault of the non-specialistsor the public if scientists cannotcommunicate their work to them.The challenge remains with the sci-entists: We are the ones whoshould be able to communicatewhat we are doing. We owe it tosociety, which provides the supportthat allows us to pursue our profes-sion. Even though English is notmy mother tongue, I set out toprove that a scientist can indeed,and should, communicate with thepublic.

TNH: Which of your accom-plishments left you with the great-est sense of satisfaction and pride?Why?

MK: Two accomplishments, andthey are related: Seeing my threesons grow and become men, but al-

ways seeking my parental adviceand guidance. And working with somany students and seeing themcomplete their studies. At the end,when they graduate, when theyshake my hand or embrace me andtelling me. “Thank you for every-thing.” In both cases, it is the greatfeeling of guiding and loving thenext generation. I guess the fatherin me shows through in both theseaspects.

TNH: If you were just beginningyour higher education, back in the1960s, would you choose a differ-ent path? Explain your choice.

MK: Probably not. But there isthat little nagging question in myheart "what if I had pursued artrather than science?”

TNH: If you were given a timemachine and could visit any threepeople in history for an evening,who would they be? What wouldyou talk about?

MK: Jesus Christ, Plato and Ne-fertiti. With Jesus, I would ask himto give me the experience of un-conditional love. I would ask himabout his teachings and his disci-ples. With Plato, I would ask himabout his teacher, Socrates. Iwould ask him about Timaeus andto summarize for me his philoso-phy. I would ask Nefertiti to talk tome about royal life in ancientEgypt and what it was like to be awoman in Egypt.

Menas Kafatos is with his family in 1950. In the back row are hisbrother Fotis, cousin George Mamangakis, and his brother Antonis.Menas stands in the middle of his mother Eleni and father Kostas.

Dr. Menas Kafatos remarried in 2006. His wife, Dr. Susan Yang, is anoted neurologist. He is pictured here at the wedding in Athens. Hissons Lefteris and Stefanos acted as best men. Continued on page 23

Menas Kafatos poses with his brothers in Greece in the 1950s. Fotis(back), professor at Imperial College in London, is an internationallyrenowned biologist. Antonis (right), a civil servant and businessman,lives in Athens. He says, “My two older brothers, Anthony and Fotis, al-ways protected me and guided me.”


By Antonia CallasSpecial to The National Herald

Ithas been said that physi-cians, by nature, arecommitted to lifelonglearning and the studyof medicine is an en-

deavor that could fascinate and con-sume several lifetimes. Physicians ofGreek ancestry, who have the rich-ness of Hellenic heritage as part oftheir inheritance, often feel obligat-ed to strive harder, be better andgive of themselves generously. Theidea logically presents itself as acontinuum from Hippocrates idealsexemplifying a compassionate andhumanitarian medical practice.

The Hellenic Medical Society ofNew York is a striking personifica-tion of these ideals. Its works of in-volvement, outreach and advance-ment, not just for those on the Eastcoast, but for the Greek Diasporaworldwide are exemplary. HMS hasdiligently evolved since its inceptionas a local fraternity into a global,multi-directional society engaged inadvocating for positive change incontemporary health care issues,thus ensuring a robust future forHellenic leadership in medicine.

The Hellenic Medical Society’sgenesis began in the First WorldWar. It is fitting that the society wasco-founded by the renowned physi-cian Dr. George N. Papanicolaou,who, as Dr. Katherine Hajjar, chair-man of the Department of Cell andDevelopmental Biology at WeillMedical College states, “was veryfamiliar with medicine as an en-deavor of the mind and heart.”

The group was officially regis-tered in 1920 as the Greek-Ameri-can Medical Fraternity. In 1924, theFraternity changed its name to theGreek-American IntercollegiateClub and under this rubric, broad-ened its scope.

A little over a decade later, underthe leadership of Dr. Polybios Coryl-loss, members of the Greek-Ameri-can Intercollegiate Club broke off toform a separate organization com-prised only of Greek-Americanphysicians. Called the HellenicMedical Society of New York, itsoriginal purpose included cultivat-ing fraternal relationships among itsmembers and assisting in thepreservation of public health in con-junction with other medical soci-eties.

If one wishes to sort through the

tangled vines of the many Greek or-ganizations that have germinated,grown and flowered over the years,the Intercollegiate Club itselfchanged its name in 1945 to theHellenic University Club of NewYork, the name by which it ispresently known.

At first, HMS planned on creat-ing a network of Greek Americanphysicians and assisting in thepreservation of public health in con-junction with other medical soci-eties. However, time, change, andthe Second World War saw mem-bership dwindle. By the mid-1960s,the organization had about 20members, and its activities were pri-marily social.

Then, in 1967, HMS began to re-purpose itself. Galvanized under theleadership of president, Dr. Theofi-los Deliyanides, the organizationrewrote its constitution, recruitednew members and saw the begin-ning of fundraising events for theeducational of Greek physicians.HMS has not looked back since.

Dr. Marinos Petratos, presidentfrom 1975 to 1977, a gregarious

and energetic man explains, “Still,we realized something had tochange, we needed a bigger objec-tive.” The idea of creating a scholar-ship was conceived. The groupwanted something that could carrythe society through the future andcreate a permanent and lastinglegacy. Petratos chuckles in recollec-tion; “The first year we awardedtwo scholarships, each for $500! Weare currently awarding 30 to 40 ayear, so we’ve come a long way.”

Currently HMS ScholarshipFunds grant valuable financial andmedical resources to talented stu-dents and physicians. The scholar-ships provide the very importantfunction of strengthening the ethnicand cultural bonds of Greek her-itage. HMS awards approximately$50,000 in scholarships each year.At this time, scholarships are grant-ed to American students of Hellenicdescent but HMS has granted sever-al international scholarships as welland may possibly increase thatnumber in the future.

The awards include the HMSMedical Student Scholarship, which

is granted to medical students fromNew York, New Jersey, Connecticutand Pennsylvania; the LeonidasLantzounis Research Grant, award-ed to students for research in thebiomedical sciences; the MichaelMulinos Postgraduate Award,awarded to postgraduate students;and the Christ Bozes High SchoolMedical Essay Prize, which awards$500 grants to high-school studentsfrom across the United States whoare planning on going into medi-cine.

In addition, there are namedfunds and scholarships in honor ofphysicians and colleagues: The An-gelakos-Gabriel Memorial Scholar-ship, the Theodore and EvelynChengelis Memorial Scholarship,the Polybios N. Corylloss MemorialScholarship, the Flessas MemorialScholarship, the Anthony and JoyceKales Scholarship, the Lignos Schol-arship, the Nicholas MemorialScholarship, the Kotsilimbas Memo-rial Scholarship, the StefanidesScholarship, the Vardopoulos Schol-arship, the A. Vasilas Scholarshipand the HMS/Cornell Papanicolaou

Scholarship which is presented atthe annual Papanicolaou sympo-sium.

The scholarships are given at theAnnual Scholarship Weekend Cele-bration held in December. Thisyear’s 72nd annual celebration willbe held over the weekend of De-cember 5th & 6th. The festivities be-gin with a Friday evening cocktailreception, scientific exhibits, a two-hour scientific symposium and thepresentation of the HMS Scholar-ship and Awards to the recipients.On Saturday evening, HMS willhold a Gala Dinner Dance at theRainbow Room of Rockefeller Cen-ter honoring distinguished Hel-lenes. The honorees for 2008 are asfollows: Distinguished Physician:Christopher J. Logothetis, M.D.,professor and chair, GenitourinaryMedical Oncology Center and direc-tor, Genitourinary Program, Univer-sity of Texas M.D. Anderson CancerCenter, Houston, Texas; Distin-guished Hellene: Antonios A. Dia-mataris, publisher/editor, The Na-tional Herald; Esteemed Colleague:John Kampessis, M.D.

The scholarships have anotherimportant function. They are a wayto energize the community and in-spire medical students to start Med-ical Societies in their own cities up-on graduation. “Most societies out-side of New York were started bystudents that have received scholar-ships and liked the idea of HMS,”says Petratos.

Hellenic Medical Societies incities across the United States oper-ate under the umbrella of Federa-tion of Hellenic Medical Societies.They include: Chicago/Midwest,Los Angeles, Boston, New Jersey,Philadelphia, Washington D.C.,Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal,Quebec. There are currently initia-tives underway to form Societies inSouth Carolina, New Mexico andHouston. However, the New YorkSociety is the most active and far-reaching of any in existence.

When HMS was first formed, itwas mainly comprised of medicalgraduates from Greece who came tothe United States and stayed on. Asthe society has grown and immigra-tion slowed considerably, it now at-tracts many Greek American stu-dents who are graduates of Ameri-can universities. Membership isyounger as well and as 50 percentof medical students are now female,the number of women members has

Hellenic Medical Society of New York:Taking the Pulse of a Vibrant Future

Many Hellenic Medical Society members were present to march in the 77th annual Greek IndependenceDay Parade on Fifth Avenue, New York, April 2008. They included: Drs. Karides, Bournias, Koutras,Carayannopoulos, Cosmatos, Dangas, Josifidis (back), Xethalis, Voudouris, Tsioulias (back), Chrisomalis-Valasiadis, Ms. Aslanis, and Dr. Kossidas.

COURTESY OF HELLENIC PRINTING


also grown. Currently, there are about 300

active members of HMS in NewYork although there are about 1,000physicians on the Society’s mailinglist. HMS has made great strides inunifying the Greek American physi-cians in the New York metropolitanarea and neighboring states and inaccomplishing its community goals.

Under the dynamic leadershipDr. George P. Dangas, who hasserved two terms as president overthe past four years and whose cur-rent term will expire at the end of2008, HMS has developed a robustcalendar of events and activities.

Dangas feels that multi-direc-tional events and social activitiesenhance the image of HMS acrossthe entire Omogeneia. “We try tohave visibility in various areas – weunderstand that members of societywill participate in other Omogeneiafunctions, but we try to give a differ-ent dimension in our society.”

HMS has been quite successful atcreating dynamic connections bothin the United States and abroad. Onthe home front, they have estab-lished broad and consistent collabo-rations with other Greek associa-tions that include the nationalGreek holidays, social events andacademic lectures held at diverse lo-cations.

By expanding their outreach ef-forts through joint efforts, HMS isattracting a larger and diverse audi-ence while providing a richer oppor-tunity for the entire Greek commu-nity to participate in their sharedheritage.

Academically, HMS holds a pop-ular series of both monthly andyearly lectures to educate and in-form. Popular yearly lectures in-clude the Flessas Lecture, which isheld in association with HellenicLink, the Kotsilimbas Lecture, andthe Annual George PapanicolaouSymposium, which is sponsored byHellenic Medical Society of NewYork, Weill Cornell Medical Collegeof Cornell University, the Federationof Hellenic Societies of Greater NewYork, and the Panevoikos Society.

HMS has even dipped a prover-bial toe into the publishing worldwith the recent publication andtranslation of the biography,“George Papanicolaou, M.D., Ph.D.:Life and Career, the Way to the PapTest,” originally written in Greek byDr. Anthony Vasilas.

Connecting with Greece has al-ways been part of HMS’s mission. Inthe past, medical equipment, sup-plies and books were sent on a regu-lar basis to Albania and Greece.Now however, the connection hasdeveloped considerably on bothsides. Dangas explains. “We workwith the Consul to help patientswho come from Greece. We alsohave active programs to help med-ical doctors who come from Greece

for specialty training. HMS serves asa resource; we can refer questionsand help them in many ways.”

HMS also perceptively under-stands that in this day and age, ex-panding their global presence isnecessary to ensure organizational

health and growth. Perhaps most vi-sionary and far-reaching in scope isDangas’ establishment of the GlobalHellenic Medical Network, of whichhe serves as president. The Networkwas established as a global resourceto connect different international

medical associations, and its mis-sion is strictly medical, althoughcomplementary to, World HellenicBiomedical Association goals. Usingthe Internet as a tool of communica-tion, the Global Network connectsand coordinates medical global

events, ideas and people. The Founding Forum of the

Global Hellenic Medical Networkwas initiated by Greece’s Healthand Social Solidarity Ministry andwas held on the island of Kos, in2006. It was organized in coopera-tion with the Hellenic Medical Soci-ety of New York, the Federation ofHellenic Medical Societies of NorthAmerica and the Hellenic Academyof Medical Training, based inAthens. Representatives of medicalassociations or working groupsfrom four continents were presentand over 200 attendees acted to-wards a declaration of common in-terests and missions.

This past September, HMS waspleased to participate in the bienni-al World Hellenic Biomedical Asso-ciation (WHBA) symposium, held inCyprus. WHBA’s goal is to bring to-gether global Hellenism in the areasof medicine and biomedical engi-neering.

The Global Hellenic Medical Net-work also held their conference inconjunction with the WHBA, wheretheir participation was most wel-come.

Dangas has also worked diligent-ly to expand interaction with theGreek medical community. He trav-els to Europe frequently, meetingwith various groups such as theCentral Health Council in Athens(KESY), the dean and vice-dean ofAthens Medical School, the MIT andStanford alumni clubs in Athens,and the president of the WHBZ,Gabriel Panayi, in London.

Dangas has established strongties to Minister of Health DimitrisAvramopoulos, who, in turn, has re-peatedly visited HMS in New Yorkand actively supported the organi-zation with a monetary grant fromthe Greek government – a first forany professional society abroad.

This past summer, the GreekMinistry of Health invited HMS andthe Global Hellenic Medical Net-work to participate in the “pre-Olympiad” conference in Beijing,China. A three-member delegationattended and participated with theGreek and Chinese Health Min-istries.

Whether working on naming asection of a street at Cornell Med-ical College, “Dr. George Papanico-laou Way,” or connecting the Hel-lenic medical profession on a worldstage, HMS has proven it is far-sighted and diligent in creating astrong foundation that will buildlong-lasting roads to the future.

Antonia Callas is a freelancewriter based in Chicago. Herwork has appeared in a variety ofHellenic newspapers and maga-zines throughout the country. Sheis currently attending DePaul Uni-versity and will receive her Bach-elor of Arts in 2009.

In 1997, a tree was brought from the island of Kos by Dr. Anthony Vasilas and was planted at New York-Presbyterian Hospital of Cornell University in honor of Dr. George Papanicolaou. It replaced the one de-stroyed during a previous expansion program of the hospital. In 1920, Dr. Papanicolaou was the firstpresident of The Hellenic Medical Society of New York (then known as the Greek-American Medical Fra-ternity). He became renowned for the development of the Pap test, a method of detecting cervical cancer.

Greek Health Minister Demetris Avramopoulos (left) presents Hellenic Medical Society of New York pres-ident, Dr. George Dangas, with a likeness of Hygeia, the ancient Greek goddess of health at HMS's 70thAnnual Scholarship Gala held on December 2, 2006. Avramopoulos affirmed the Greek Government’scommitment to the development of joint initiatives to help bring the Hellenic American medical commu-nity closer to Greece and Greeks living abroad.

COURTESY OF HELLENIC PRINTING

TNH ARCHIVES


By Marianthe KaranikasSpecial to The National Herald

In1944, when Dr.Tom Maniatis was ayear old, Dr. Os-wald T. Avery, Dr.Colin MacLeod and

Dr. Maclyn McCarty discoveredthat the gene, the basic unit ofheredity, is made of DNA or de-oxyribonucleic acid. In 1953, whenManiatis was 10 years old, Dr.James D. Watson and Sir FrancisCrick discovered the “secret of life,”that is, the structure of DNA or thedouble helix. The double helicalstructure allowed Watson and Crickto propose a model for how genesare replicated and passed onto sub-sequent generations, and how theinformation encoded in DNA can betranslated into proteins. At thattime, Pete and Jane Maniatis knewnothing of such matters. Nor didthey know their young son wouldone day work alongside Watson,Crick, and other molecular biolo-gists to discover secrets that wouldlead to major medical advances.

Maniatis and his research teamwere the first to isolate a humangene, specifically the human hemo-globin gene. This research ap-proach helped scientists pinpointthe specific genetic mutations thatcause thalassemia, an anemiaprevalent in Greece and parts ofItaly. Maniatis’ lab went on to pro-duce the first “library” of humangenes. Subsequently, researchersused these molecular approaches toidentify the genetic basis of manyother diseases. Maniatis’ contribu-tions did not stop there. He co-au-thored a manual on recombinantDNA technology that has trainedgenerations of students throughoutthe world. In addition to his acade-mic research, Maniatis co-foundedthree biotechnology companies,which produced several FDA-ap-proved drugs. Recently, the untime-ly death of his sister Carol droveManiatis and his collaborators touncover startling new characteris-

tics of cells affectedby Lou Gehrig’s dis-ease or AmyotrophicLateral Sclerosis(ALS). FROM THE ROCKIES

TO RECOMBINANT DNA“I was named after my

grandfather,” Maniatis said.The elder Tom Maniatis emi-

grated from a small village nearTripoli, worked in Chicago, and set-tled in Denver where he owned andmanaged a restaurant. His son Petehelped out in his father’s restau-rant, served in the U.S. Navy in theSouth Pacific during World War II,and was a career fireman with theDenver Fire Department. Pete mar-ried Jane, a Missourian of Irish de-scent who had moved to Denver.While Pete fought fires, Jane man-aged the household.

While Wat-son, Crick and others began tobuild the new science of molecu-lar genetics, Maniatis camped,fished, and hiked with his parentsand his sister Carol in the RockyMountains near his Denver home.An athletic youth, he ran track inhigh school. Until his senior year,Maniatis did not entertain academ-ic aspirations. Nobody in his familyhad gone to college. Then Maniatistook chemistry.

“I had a great teacher,” Maniatissaid.

This teacher inspired him to pur-sue the study of chemistry at theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder.However, when Maniatis took or-ganic chemistry, he became inter-ested in biology as well.

At Boulder, the biologists Dr.Joseph Daniel introduced him tomolecular biology and molecular ge-netics. Molecular biology is thestudy of life processes at the molecu-lar level while molecular genetics fo-cuses on the structure and functionof genes. Biologically importantmolecules include proteins like he-moglobin and insulin and nucleicacids like DNA and RNA. Proteinsare the workhorses of the bodywhile DNA and RNA provide the ge-netic blueprints for how proteins aremade. Complex molecular processestranscribe the DNA of the genes intomessenger RNAs, which, in turn, aretranslated to make proteins.

Maniatis graduated from theUniversity of Colorado in 1965 witha dual major in chemistry and biol-ogy. He also received an M.A. in bi-ology in 1967. He then entered adoctoral program in molecular biol-ogy at Vanderbilt University and

graduated in1971. At Vanderbilt, he studiedmore details about the structure ofDNA. Maniatis then carried outpostdoctoral studies at HarvardUniversity and at the Medical Re-search Council of Molecular Biolo-gy in Cambridge, England. At Har-vard, he worked with Dr. MarkPtashne on how proteins bind DNAduring gene regulation in a viruscalled bacteriophage lambda. Atthe MRC, he worked with Dr. FredSanger on determining a sequenceof DNA in a regulatory region of theviral DNA.

What is the lambda bacterio-phage and why is it important?Lambda “phage” is a virus that in-fects E. coli bacteria. Lambda phagehas a head and tail made of pro-teins, and the DNA is tightly packedinside. Through its tail, the phageinjects its DNA into a bacterium.The phage replicates its DNA, de-grades the E. coli DNA, and takesover the cellular machinery of thebacterium in order to produce asmany phage particles as possible.Lambda phage has been used wide-ly as a model organism to studygene regulation and protein-DNAinteractions. It has also been usedto clone recombinant DNA.

What does that mean? Recombi-

nant DNA is produced by combin-ing DNA sequences that would notnormally occur together, for exam-ple a piece of human DNA can beinserted into the viral DNA andpropagated in bacteria. Why do

such a thing? A major reasonis to isolate and study spe-

cific genes or sequencesof DNA. Cloning genes

makes it possible forscientists to purifyand make many

copies of

s p e c i f i cgenes. Recall

that the lambdaphage DNA makes many copies ofitself inside the bacterial host.When scientists insert a gene intothe lambda phage, they can thenuse the phage’s ability to replicateto make many copies of the insert-ed gene for detailed studies. Whymake these copies or clones? Oneimportant use of the cloning of spe-cific genes is in gene therapy, wheregenes are inserted into the cells andtissues to treat disease.

Following his postdoctoral workat Harvard and the MRC, Maniatisbecame a senior staff investigatorat Cold Spring Harbor Laboratoryin New York at the invitation of Dr.James D. Watson. Here Maniatisand his coworkers developed a newmethod of cloning, which beginswith RNA instead of DNA. Recallthat DNA is transcribed into RNAand then translated into protein.Maniatis and his lab converted RNA

The Library of Life:Dr. Tom Maniatis and Molecular Genetics

KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE

In addition to his academic re-search, Dr. Tom Maniatis co-founded three biotechnologycompanies, which produced sev-eral FDA-approved drugs.


transcripts back into DNA and thenmade copies or clones of this com-plementary DNA or cDNA. Mani-atis’ lab used this method to obtainthe cDNA of the RNA that encodeshemoglobin. This cDNA cloningmethod allowed scientists to pro-duce RNA transcripts of any gene.It also helped scientists pinpointthe genetic mutations that causethalassemia, a disease caused bymutations in the gene encoding he-moglobin.

From Cold Spring Harbor, Mani-atis moved to the California Insti-tute of Technology where he andhis lab worked on cloning the DNAof genes rather than the RNA tran-scripts. Here they produced thefirst “library” of human genes, amajor advance in gene research.Using this library, scientists wereable to isolate virtually any humangene. This “library” approach wasinstrumental in the human genomeproject, which later led to the de-termination of the sequence of theentire human genome.

In 1981, Maniatis returned toHarvard as professor of biochem-istry and molecular biology. Heserved as department chairmanfrom 1985 to 1988. He is currentlythe Jeremy R. Knowles Professor ofMolecular and Cellular Biology.

FROM GENE LIBRARIES TOBIOTECHNOLOGY

Putting gene libraries to work,Maniatis co-founded three biotech-nology companies: Genetics Insti-tute in 1980, ProScript Pharma in1997 and Accelron Pharma in2004.

Genetics Institute produced sev-eral FDA-approved drugs and wastaken over by Wyeth Pharmaceuti-cals in 1994. At Genetics Institute,scientists were able to help peoplewith hemophilia lead normal lives.Hemophilia is a genetic disorder inwhich critical proteins necessaryfor blood clotting are not pro-duced. Previously, these patientswere treated with crudely fraction-ated blood products that were of-ten contaminated with viruses,such as HIV. Thus, many hemophil-ia patients contracted AIDS. Be-cause the clotting factors are pre-sent in such small amounts in hu-man blood, it was not possible toobtain pure proteins.

To solve this problem the Genet-ics Institute scientists cloned thegenes encoding the clotting factorsand then reinserted them into spe-cially designed cells that could beused to produce the clotting factorsin large amounts in the laboratory,”Maniatis told a reporter from TheHarvard Gazette. “Thus, highly-pu-rified clotting factors could bemade from a source free of any in-fectious agents.”

“Scientists at the Genetics Insti-tute also discovered a bone mor-phogenetic protein, which is now

used routinely in bone reconstruc-tion and bone healing,” Maniatistold me.

At ProScript Pharma, scientistsdeveloped the FDA approved drug,Velcade, which is used to treat mul-tiple myeloma, a cancer of cells inthe bone marrow that produce an-tibodies. Velcade can help prolongthe lives of these cancer patients byslowing the spread of the cancer.

“At a charity event, a womanthanked us for giving her fatherfour more years of life with Vel-cade,” Maniatis said. “It’s very grat-ifying to help people.”

ProScript Pharma was takenover by Millennium Pharmaceuti-cals in 2001. Acceleron Pharma,meanwhile, remains a privatelyheld biotechnology company de-veloping drugs for the treatment ofdiseases of the bone and muscle.

THE POWER OF FAMILYHERITAGE

Maniatis has visited Greece sev-eral times, once to receive an hon-orary doctorate from the Universi-ty of Athens. He loves the friendli-

ness and the warmth of the Greekpeople.

Like most Greeks and GreekAmericans, Maniatis cherishes hisfamily. His parents, Pete and Jane,were married for over 65 years.They both died in 2006. Maniatisenjoys spending time with his twosons, Ethan and Silas, from his firstmarriage to Jessie Klyce.

Ethan lives in Belmont, Massa-chusetts. A Harvard graduate, he iscurrently a pilot for Jet Blue Air-lines. “I find it interesting that myson Ethan is a pilot,” Maniatis said.“Perhaps it has something to dowith our Greek heritage. A dispro-portionately high number ofGreeks from the Mani go into theGreek air force.”

Silas lives in Cambridge, Massa-chusetts. He graduated from NewYork University and is currently aPh.D. student in molecular and cel-lular biology at Harvard University.

“Silas is studying the role of mi-croRNAs in learning,” Maniatissaid.

MicroRNAs are very short RNA

molecules, which regulate gene ex-pression. Silas Maniatis is workingwith Dr. Sam Kunes whose re-search focuses on the developmentand function of the nervous sys-tem.

Maniatis’ passion for researchunites with love for his family. Hisonly sister, Carol, died in 1998from ALS. Soon afterward, Mani-atis was asked to help find a curefor this usually fatal, neurodegen-erative disease.

When most people are asked tohelp find a medical cure, they do-nate money, certainly a valuablegift. Maniatis, however, went astep beyond. Together with scien-tists at Harvard and Columbia, Ma-niatis discovered a major break-through in ALS research.

A REMARKABLE TRIBUTE ALS is caused by the degenera-

tion of motor neurons, the nervecells that control the voluntarymovement of the muscles.

“It’s very exciting,” Maniatissaid. “We’re using stem cells tostudy the development of the dis-ease.”

Some background is necessaryto understand the significance ofManiatis’ findings. First, rememberthat neurons or nerve cells in thecentral nervous system are sup-ported by cells called glia, from theGreek word for “glue.” Glial cellsalso provide neurons with nutri-ents. The glia outnumber neuronsby about 10 to 1. Maniatis’ lab isfocusing on the role of astroglia inthe development of ALS. Astrogliaare just what their name suggests:star-shaped glial cells that supportmotor neurons in the brain andspinal cord.

Second, recall the importance ofembryonic stem cells. These cellsare pluripotent, which means theycan develop into any kind of cell inthe body.

Using embryonic stem cellsfrom mice, Maniatis and his collab-orators grew mouse motor neuronsand mouse astroglia that were af-flicted with ALS. And the re-searchers discovered a most shock-ing secret: the diseased astrogliasecrete a toxic factor that kills bothhealthy and diseased motor neu-rons. The scientists are now work-ing to identify this toxic factor.

“We’ve opened up a new direc-tion in ALS research,” Maniatissaid.

This research is a remarkabletribute. What better way for abrother to honor the memory of hissister? Maniatis and his colleaguesmay help pave the way toward acure for ALS.

Dr. Marianthe Karanikas teachesscientific and technical writingat Missouri State Universitywhere she is associate professorof English.

Dr. Tom Maniatis is the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecularand Cellular Biology at Harvard University. Maniatis and his researchteam were the first to isolate a human gene, specifically the humanhemoglobin gene. This research approach helped scientists pinpointthe specific genetic mutations that cause thalassemia, an anemiaprevalent in Greece and parts of Italy. Maniatis’ lab went on to pro-duce the first “library” of human genes. Recently, the untimely deathof his sister Carol drove Maniatis and his collaborators to uncoverstartling new characteristics of cells affected by Lou Gehrig’s diseaseor Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD NEWS OFFICE


Dr. Christos Papadimitriou is C. Lester Hogan Professor of ComputerScience at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of theNational Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Artsand Sciences. He is the author of many books on computational theo-ry and recently published a book of essays in Greek entitled “Isoviastous xaker?” (“Life sentence to hackers?”). He is pictured here host-ing a reception for new students, circa 2002.

work. The other fascinating aspectof this story is that the majority ofthe ingenious mathematicians whopursued this dream had painfulbouts with mental illness.

TNH: You’ve lectured on thesubject of mathematics and narra-tive. What draws you to the inter-section of these disciplines?

CP: My love and mission in lifeis to teach. It’s really humbling fora moment for an academic to real-ize that language may have existedfor around 50,000 years, yet orga-nized education has been aroundfor only 1,000. What was happen-ing before? Well, for the longestperiod, knowledge was transmittedthrough story. Storytelling was theonly way of transmitting culturalinformation. That was good, be-cause stories are sticky. You’remuch more likely to remember a

story than an argument. So, I havebeen trying in my teaching to injectsome of this. I often interrupt totell a story, either to illustrate atechnical or mathematical point, orto tell about the life of a pioneerwho brought the idea to us, and Ithink these are the moments mystudents enjoy the most.

Nile Southern is a writer andfilmmaker living in Boulder, Col-orado. His book: “The CANDYMen; The Rollicking Life andTimes of the Notorious Novel,CANDY” (Arcade, 2004), wasawarded ‘Book of the Year’ fornon-fiction, from the ColoradoCenter for the Book. His latestproject is a radio series entitled“Greeks Out West; From Byzan-tium to Bingham Canyon and Be-yond,” a project which seeks ad-ditional funding. Contact:[email protected]

Professor ChristosPapadimitriou: Embracing thePast, Navigating the Future Continued from page 9

PEG SKORPINSKI

TNH: Which of your accom-plishments left you with the great-est sense of satisfaction and pride?

SK: My work on the Voyagermissions. It was the premier scien-tific space mission of the 20th cen-tury. Voyager visited four planetsand is now in interstellar space. Ihave been working in it for 40years, and am still getting data andwriting papers about the science. Icould not ask for anything better.With all the discoveries, it was justfantastic.

TNH: What was the biggestchallenge you ever faced, and howdid you meet it?

SK: It was when I was a scientif-ic manager, rather than as a scien-tist, during the NEAR mission tothe asteroid Eros. We got it to Eros,maneuvered to orbit Eros, and lostthe signal after doing the maneu-ver. It disappeared for 26 hours.People were still skeptical aboutcheap planetary missions. Weneeded the mission to succeed.

It was really a challenge, but werecovered the spacecraft. Therewas a subtle software problemcommunicating between the atti-tude control and the spacecraftcomputer. I could see how the pro-gram people would become de-moralized, but I kept the team go-ing until we found a solution andrecovered the satellite. It was a big

payoff that demonstrated low costmissions were possible.

TNH: How do you feel yourGreek heritage has affected yourlife?

SK: Through its emphasis onachievement and the pride of pursu-ing excellence. I remember readingthe oration of Percales in Thucy-dides’ History of the PeloponnesianWar. He talked about the pursuit ofexcellence. When I read that, Ithought I had to pursue excellence.The space frontier opening up was aterrific opportunity to push bound-aries and explore new things. Iwanted to do the best possible that Iwas capable of.

A sense of history is another ele-ment of being Greek. I felt I had aspecial responsibility to pursuethings with a long-lasting impact.

TNH: What is the best partabout being American?

SK: America makes it possiblefor people of determination andtalent to succeed. Meritocracy iswhat is practiced and what makesit great. Its democracy and democ-ratic values are also special, theprocess by which we choose lead-ers. Leaders have to demonstratewhy they should be our leaders. Ittests their mettle. I cannot imagineleaders elsewhere doing this or go-ing through this process.

TNH: If you could visit any-where – on Earth, or in the solarsystem – past or present – where

would you go?SK: Jupiter is my favorite plan-

et. It has the right name. It is theking of planets. There is terrificscenery there, both in Jupiter’s at-mosphere and on the moons ofJupiter. On Io there are always 10to 15 volcanoes erupting. Europahas an icy surface. God aloneknows what materials are underthat ice crust.

If I could go anywhere, I wouldtake a trip there and walk aroundon its moons. Jupiter’s high radia-tion would make it impossible toreally do that. You would getcooked in six hours. It is fun to doit in my imagination.

TNH: If you could not be a sci-entist, what would you be?

SK: I became friends with Van-gelis Papathanassiou at one point,the composer that wrote the scorefor the movie “Chariots of Fire.” Iwas fascinated by the way he wasinspired by music, playing the com-positions in his mind. I sometimeswonder what it would be like to bea composer.

TNH: What advice would youoffer anyone starting out in life to-day – people in their late teens?

SK: Do the best job possible inwhatever they decide to do as a ca-reer. Success is its own reward. Itdoes not come unless you prepare.You have to work as hard as youcan with absolute integrity andhonor.

Stamatios Krimigis: Argus of the Space AgeContinued from page 5

Dr. Stamatios Krimigis and his wife Dr. Maria Anastasopoulou celebrate with friends on the day of NEAR'slanding. From left to right are Dr. Richard Roca, John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Di-rector, Senator Paul Sarbanes (MD), Stamatios Krimigis, his wife Maria Anastosopoulou, his son JohnKrimigis and Peter Marudas.



the human body’s operation, he re-turns to our hero, stating, “Ant-Man can indeed punch his way outof paper bag.” The author ends thissection in a typical humorousmode: “In this way he (Ant-Man)serves as a role model and inspira-tion to all comic-book fans.”

Kakalios serves as a role modeland inspiration to me. He is a mod-ern Superman whose powers gen-erate from his intellect and creativ-ity. He says, “If the study of the nat-ural world has demonstrated any-thing, it is that, unlike the Hulk,the smarter we get, the strongerwe become …. It is our intelligencethat provides the competitive ad-vantage that enabled us to becomethe dominant species on the plan-et. It is our intelligence that is oursuperpower.”

Dr. Elaine Thomopoulos writesabout the Greek American expe-rience. She is curator of the ex-hibit, “The Greeks of BerrienCounty, Michigan,” now on per-manent display at the Annuncia-tion and St. Paraskevi Greek Or-thodox Church in New Buffalo,Michigan.

Prof. J. Kakalios:Superman in Disguise Continued from page 11

Comic books helped shaped Dr. James Kakalios’ interest in science.He says, “There is an indoctrination in the sciences. The spirit. Thereis a high emphasis in knowing the rules of the game, creative prob-lem solving, out-thinking the bad guys.”

FERMILAB

Dr. Vaia Papadimitriou is a particle physicist at Fermilab in Batavia,Illinois. Papadimitriou is the assistant division head of Fermilab’s Ac-celerator Division and a member of the CDF (Collider Detector at Fer-milab) experimental collaboration.

ities, science becomes real to chil-dren and in many cases, more in-teresting and accessible. For olderchildren or adults interested inlearning more about physics, Pa-padimitriou also encourages read-ing the magazines Physics Todayand Scientific American.

When asked what is on the hori-zon in particle physics, Papadim-itriou noted that the race is on tofind the Higgs boson as well as tosearch for other new particles andresonances expected or unexpect-ed (dark matter particles, super-symmetric particles, extra dimen-sions, etc.). The Higgs boson is theparticle that has eluded physicistsfor a generation and according tothe Standard Model of understand-ing physics, it endows elementaryparticles in the universe with mass.Finding it could unlock knowledgeof new realms of nature. In August,Fermilab reported that it came onestep closer to understanding thenature of the Higgs, but it has not

yet been found and still presentsone of the most exciting next stepsin field. The search for the Higgswill soon become even more in-tense when the large Hadron Col-lider starts operations at CERN inSwitzerland.

In talking with Papadimitriouand preparing this article, thiswriter was reminded of what anamazingly intricate and complexworld we live in. There is suchdepth beneath the layers of whatwe see. It is humbling and awe-in-spiring. This writer is grateful toPapadimitriou and to all like herwho push the frontiers of scienceto deepen our understanding of theorigins of our universe, and in do-ing so, create technologies that en-hance and advance our lives.

Penelope Petropoul graduatedwith a bachelor’s degree in histo-ry from the University of Chica-go. She works in alumni rela-tions at the university and enjoystraveling, writing and entertain-ing family and friends.

The Fundamentals of our Universe:Dr. Vaia Papadimitriou Strives toAnswer Eternal QuestionsContinued from page 7

Cosmides and her husbandJohn Tooby, reside in Santa Bar-bara, California. They have onedaughter, Nike Tooby Cosmides,named after Winged Victory, theTitan who helped Athena win herbattles. Early on, Cosmides andTooby decided that if they had aboy, the child would share Tooby’slast name and if they had a girl, thechild would share her surname. Atthe age of ten, Nike aspires to be afashion designer.

John P. Psiharis is president of J.Psiharis & Associates, Inc, andco-owner of Little Helpers, Inc.Both are Chicago area business-es. He is a founder and formerexecutive director of Greek-American Community Servicesand a founding member of theGreek-American Nursing and Re-habilitation Center located inWheeling, Illinois.

Dr. LedaCosmidesContinued from page 15

TNH: How do you feel yourGreek heritage has affected yourlife?

MK: It is so much of who I am. Iam not just proud of my heritage,in a deep way, but I continue to dis-cover what is so great about beingof Greek origin, which is to be ableto adapt and still be a human be-ing. What the Greek heritage is re-ally in the end is the universality ofhumanity. At the bottom of it all,what sums up everything aboutGreece, then and now, is the valueof humanity. Greece brings out thebest in humanity, I really believethat.

TNH: What is the best partabout being American?

MK: The foundation of Americais democracy, freedom and human-ity. All founded in Greece. So thebest in America is the best ofGreece.

THN: Any hobbies or passionsoutside your work?

MK: Reading books, swimming,skiing and listening to music.

TNH: If you could not be a pro-fessor or a scientist, what wouldyou be?

MK: Clearly an artist.TNH: What advice would you

offer anyone starting out in life to-day – people in their late teens?

MK: We have huge challengesin front of us, having to do with cli-mate change. I would urge them tostudy and follow what is happen-ing to the environment – theirwell-being and even life, literally,depend on it.

Mark Lardas, a Texan of Greekdescent, was born and grew upin Ann Arbor, Michigan. An engi-neer who works at a major aero-space company, he is also a free-lance writer, amateur historianand model-maker.

Menas Kafatos: Solving the LabyrinthContinued from page 17

JONATHAN CHAPMAN PHOTOGRAPH, FIGURES IN PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MARVEL COMICS


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