The gift arrived in a letter handed to a king. On October 10, 1958, the American ambassador called on King Paul of Greece and presented him with a donation of one hundred million drachmas - a sum meant to plant scientific research in a country still recovering from war. The thinking behind it was pointedly of its era. As one supporter put it, the free world would be secured not by luring every brilliant scientist to America, but by encouraging local scientists to flourish in their own countries. Out of that conviction grew the National Hellenic Research Foundation, established that same year to pursue research across both the sciences and the humanities.
The idea had a quieter origin than the royal ceremony suggests. Yagos Pesmazoglou first dreamed of building research in Greece during his student years at Harvard, then carried the ambition home through a career in government and finance. In 1958 he brought his vision directly to King Paul. The foundation was originally chartered as the Royal Research Foundation, and its name was deliberately chosen to signal that this was not a teaching institution - its single purpose was original scientific research, with the promise that it would one day grow its own institutes. American philanthropy helped light the fuse, with the Ford and Rockefeller foundations weighing grants alongside the U.S. government's pledge.
The foundation rose on unlikely ground at the edge of ancient Athens. The plot finally chosen had been the stable and parking lot of the Evzone guard, ringed by avenues named for kings. The Board entrusted the design to two giants of twentieth-century Greek architecture, Dimitris Pikionis and Konstantinos Doxiadis - the latter offering to trim his fee. Construction proved a saga of canceled tenders and rising costs before the building was finally received in October 1968, three and a half years after work began. A sixth floor was added in 1990, bringing it to nearly fourteen thousand square meters of laboratories, libraries, and reading rooms in the heart of the modern capital.
What makes the foundation unusual is its range. Today it houses three institutes, and they could hardly be more different. The Institute of Historical Research, formed in 2012 from three of the foundation's oldest centers, investigates Hellenism from prehistoric antiquity to modern times - Byzantine scholars here help publish the archives of the monasteries of Mount Athos and Patmos. A few floors away, the Institute of Chemical Biology designs potential new drugs at the frontier of chemistry and biology, while the Institute of Theoretical and Physical Chemistry explores materials, lasers, and photonics. Ancient texts and cutting-edge spectroscopy share the same address.
The historians have produced a staggering body of work. By 2018 the Institute of Historical Research had published an estimated five hundred titles, making it one of the largest publishers of historical scholarship anywhere. Its Section of Byzantine Research is reckoned among the most authoritative centers of Byzantine studies in the world, while the Section of Neohellenic Research has, since 1960, worked to inventory the intellectual treasures of modern Greece - its books, its archives, its forgotten manuscripts. The findings flow into journals with names drawn straight from the Greek tongue: Tekmeria, Byzantina Symmeikta, the Historical Review.
At the foundation's core sits the K. Th. Dimaras Library, founded in 1958, one of the largest collections of scientific and technological journals in Greece. It serves the research community but keeps its doors open to the curious public, offering on-site access to printed and electronic collections through an electronic reading room. The foundation also operates the National Documentation Centre, the country's hub for open-access knowledge. It is a quietly radical idea, embedded in a building raised on Cold War optimism: that the work done here, whether on a Byzantine charter or a new molecule, belongs in the end to everyone.
Located at 37.974 N, 23.746 E on Vasileos Konstantinou Avenue, on the southeastern edge of central Athens near the Panathenaic Stadium and the Athens Conservatory. The foundation is a mid-century modernist block set among the avenues south of the National Garden. Best viewed at lower altitudes in clear conditions. Nearest major airport: Athens International (LGAV), about 30 km east-southeast.