Prof. Remembered in Service

Friends, colleagues, and students gathered beneath the vaulted ceilings of Memorial Church to remember the life of former history professor Angeliki Laiou.

The acclaimed scholar of Byzantine history’s penetrating intellect and commanding presence created legions of followers who admired her academic expertise as much as her cosmopolitan sensibilities.

“Angeliki Laiou’s family has lost its foundation. Greece has lost one of her most distinguished daughters. The international world of Byzantine studies has lost its most excellent historian,” said history Professor Michael McCormick. “Harvard has lost all of this and something more.”

Laiou died of thyroid cancer at Mass. General Hospital in December. She was 67.

As a scholar, Laiou spearheaded research in Mediterranean economic history and women’s history, and her 1985 appointment to lead the History department made her the first female chair of a department at Harvard.

“She had the rare gift of an original mind, an iron will, and a penetrating intellect,” McCormick said. “She was fearless.”

Elegantly coiffed and impeccably dressed, Greece’s former deputy secretary of foreign affairs would sweep into class like Pallas Athena herself, said history graduate student Rowan W. Dorin ’07.

Laiou would sometimes affix a freshly cut rose to her blouse during her time as director of Dumbarton Oaks, said the research center’s current director Alice-Mary M. Talbot.

Laiou “charmed” even the most imposing and volatile senior members of the history department with her staunch confidence in her intellectual abilities, said history Professor John Womack Jr.

“Every day I come down that hall in Robinson, I think for a happy second I may see her door open and her well again, there in the light,” said Womack, whose office faced Laiou’s for the past twenty years. “The door’s closed now.”

Laiou’s son, Vassili N. Thomadakis ’96, said the commencement of every new academic year invigorated his mother, who attributed her youthful appearance to her students. The degree of love and support of the messages delivered to her during her last days made Laiou “immeasurably happy,” Thomadakis said.

“It’s a great comfort for me to know how many lives she touched while she was here,” he said.

—Staff Writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.