Theodore Stephanides

Theodore Stephanides (21 January 1896 - 13 April 1983) was a Greek poet, author, doctor and naturalist. He is best remembered as the friend and mentor of the famous naturalist Gerald Durrell, featuring in Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives, The Garden of the Gods and Fillets of Plaice, Durrell's brother Lawrence's Prospero's Cell, and Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi.

A polymath, Stephanides was respected as a scientist and doctor, and acclaimed as a poet in both Greek and English, and translated a sizeable body of Greek poetry to English — notably a significant body of work by Greek poet Kostis Palamas and the Greek near-epic work .

He was also a noted biologist and scientist who has three species named after him (Cytherois stephanidesi, Thermocyclops stephanidesi, and Schizopera stephanidesi are microscopic water organisms discovered by Stephanides in 1938). He also wrote a definitive biological treatise on the freshwater life in Corfu, which is still cited in the 2000s (decade). His autobiographical account of the Battle of Crete - Climax in Crete, and his fictitious account of Corfu and the Ionian Islands - Island Trails were widely read, but are now out of print.

Theodore Stephanides was born in India to Greek parents from Thessaly. He spent his early years in Bombay. At age 11, after his father's retirement, he went to live in Corfu with his family, learning Greek there.

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