He was born in Piraeus, Kingdom of Greece and graduated from the University of Athens, where he obtained his PhD in physics in 1910, under the supervision of Timoleon A.

[4] He ended his military career with the rank of First Lieutenant and received multiple war medals including thirteen bars for battles in which he had fought.

He also worked for several months at the Mount Wilson Observatory and at the United States Weather Bureau in Washington D.C..[3] In 1921, he returned to Athens where he became head of the astronomy department of the National Observatory of Athens with a goal to build a large telescope in Greece.

However, due to the Greco-Turkish War during that period and the political instability that followed it soon became evident that the large telescope for the observatory would not materialise.

He left this post due to a lack of funding and went to Arequipa, Peru to work at Boyden Station, a branch of Harvard Observatory, with a view to finding a more suitable location for it.