Noted Hellene Spyros Vryonis passes

Spyridon Vryonis left a legacy with his work, while the scientific work he left behind for the persecutions suffered by the Greeks of Constantinople in September 1955 is considered top.

He was born on July 18, 1928, in Memphis, Tenn. Of the United States, from immigrant parents from Cephalonia. In 1950 he graduated from South-Western College Memphis and received a scholarship from the Fulbright Foundation to specialize in Greek Classical Literature and Archeology at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

In 1951 he returned to the United States and attended postgraduate studies at Harvard University's Historical Department, where he graduated in 1956 from postgraduate and doctoral studies with his dissertation topic "The internal history of Byzantium during the time of troubles, 1057-81".

He worked as a researcher at the Byzantine Institute of Dumbarton Oaks and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He served as Director of the Los Angeles University Near East Studies Center from 1972 to 1975 and from 1979 to 1982.

From 1976 to 1979 he was appointed as a post-graduate professor at the University of Athens to teach History of the Media and Modern Times. He returned to the University of Los Angeles and was appointed head of the Center for Armenian Studies at the same university.

In June 1985 he commemorated his prematurely lost son Spyridon-Vasilis, by founding the Center for Greek Studies in Sacramento, Californias. In 1988 he was invited to take over the direction of the Onassis Center for Greek Studies at the University of New York.