He attended the National Technical University of Athens at age 18, and graduated with a degree in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering in 1938.

He remained in Greece during World War II, working for an Athens elevator maintenance company during the German occupation.

In 1956 he joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to continue his work on the Astron, a proposed fusion reactor planned during Project Sherwood.

He became a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group and was the principal researcher for Operation Argus, a series of high-altitude nuclear detonations intended to create a radiation belt in the upper regions of the Earth's atmosphere as a defence against Soviet ICBMs.

His ideas were implemented by the U.S. Navy as Project Seafarer, which constructed huge ELF transmitter facilities in Michigan and Wisconsin consisting of 56 miles (90 km) of electric transmission line.