Theodore Stephanides

Theodore Stephanides (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 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 Erotocritos.

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 factual account of Corfu and the Ionian Islands - Island Trails are widely read.