Background
Vryonis, Speros was born on July 18, 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of Speros Panayis, Senior, and Helen (Touliatou) Halley.
Vryonis, Speros was born on July 18, 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of Speros Panayis, Senior, and Helen (Touliatou) Halley.
Bachelor, Southwestern University, Memphis, 1950. Master of Arts, Harvard University,1952, Doctor of Philosophy, 1956. honorary Doctor of Philosophy Rhodes College, 1984, U. Thessaloniki, 1992,Adelphi University, 1993.
He is the author of a number of works on Byzantine and Greek-Turkish relations, including his seminal The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor (1971) and The Mechanism of Catastrophe (2005). Vryonis carried out his post-doctoral research at Dumbarton Oaks before joining the history faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, where he served as the director of the G. East. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies. In 1987 he was tapped to head the Alexander South. Onassis for Hellenic Studies at New York University.
Vryonis is also the former director of the Speros Basil Vryonis Center for the Study of Hellenism and is currently the AHIF Senior Fellow for Hellenism and for Greek and Turkish Studies.
A two-volume festschrift was published in his honor in 1993. He currently resides in northern California.
Fellow American Mediaeval Academy (Haskins medal). Member American Philosophical Society, American Academy Arts andScis., Society Macedonian Studies, corresponding.
Married Badri; children: Speros Basil, Demetrios, Nikolas.