Nikolaos V. Tomadakis

N.B. Tomadakis (1907-1993). Nikolaos Tomadakis was born in Chania, the son of landowner Vasileios Tomadakis, who served as a chieftain in Crete during the years 1895-1897 and was a public school teacher, municipal councilor, and member of the General Assemblies in Crete in 1889 and 1911, and Olga Theodorakakou. He spent his childhood and school years in Crete and was taught by Emm. Generalis, who encouraged him to pursue literature. He studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Athens (1924-1929), where he earned his doctorate with his dissertation "Publications and Manuscripts of the Poet Dionysios Solomos" (1935). He pursued postgraduate studies with a scholarship in Pisa, Italy (1938 until the outbreak of the Greco-Italian War), and from 1935 to 1937, he was the director of the Historical Archive of Crete. After the declaration of World War II, he was forced to leave Crete and move to Athens due to being targeted by the Germans, and from 1947 to 1950, he served as the director of the General State Archives. He had a career as a university professor in the newly established Chair of Byzantine Philology at the University of Athens and served three times as the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy (1958-1959, 1965-1966, 1970-1971). He was a corresponding member of the Eastern Institute of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, a foreign associate of the Academy of Letters, Arts, and Sciences of Palermo, and an honorary doctor of the University of Milan. He was also the secretary and president of the Society of Byzantine Studies, a consultant to the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece (and director of its Bulletin), president of the Society of Historical Studies on Modern Hellenism, and of the editorial board of the journal Mnemosyne. As the editor of the scientific journal Athena since 1947, he also engaged in poetry under the pseudonym Nikos Theodorakos. His publications in scientific journals, newspapers, and scholarly works exceed a thousand, and he completed more than sixty-five independent works. He passed away in Athens. For more biographical details on Nikolaos Tomadakis, see Livadaras N., "Tomadakis Nikolaos," World Biographical Dictionary 9b. Athens, Ekdotiki Athinon, 1988; Stergiopoulos Kostas (ed.), "N.B. Tomadakis," Greek Poetry: Anthology - Grammar, p. 615. Athens, Sokolis, 1980; and Chatzifotis I.M., "Tomadakis Nikolaos V.," Great Encyclopedia of Modern Greek Literature 12. Athens, Hari Patsi, n.d. (Source: Archive of Greek Writers, EKEBI).