[3] Born in Greece, Panagiotatou and her sister Alexandra were the first two female students to be accepted in the medical school at Athens University in 1893, after having proved that there were not formal law banning women from attending university in Greece.

[6] The students protested[7] and refused to attend her classes because she was a woman, so she was forced to resign.

She moved to Egypt, where she became a professor in microbiology at Cairo University specializing in tropical diseases and director of the Alexandria general hospital.

In 1938, she returned to Greece and was named a professor at the Athens University medical school.

[8] She became the first Deputy Professor of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Greece, in 1947 an honorary Professor at the Medical School of Athens and in 1950 she became the first female member of the Academy of Athens.