Dimitri Nanopoulos

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Professor Dimitri Nanopoulos (or 'Demetrios Nanopoulos' , Greek 'Δημήτριος Νανόπουλος') is a theoretical physicist best known for his work on Grand Unified Theory (GUT), a term which he is credited with coining in a paper published in 1978. He is one of the most regularly cited researchers in the world, cited more than 19,000 times over across a number of separate branches of science.[1]

Born in Greece in 1948, he grew up in the Zographou district of Athens ,graduated from the University of Athens in 1971 and obtained his PhD from University of Sussex in 1973. He currently holds the title of Distinguished Professor at the NASA-supported Texas A&M University and heads the Astrophysics Division of the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), as well as being national representative for the international particle physics laboratory CERN and the European Space Agency ESA.

With his disciples John Hagelin, a former U.S presidential candidate, and the British John Ellis he invented the flipped SU(5) model of the unification of forces.

On 17th October 2006 he was awarded the Onassis International prize by the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine studies in Venice.[2]