Theo Pavlidis was born and grew up in Greece, graduating from the National Technical University of Athens in 1957. He came to the United States in 1961 and received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. He was on the faculty of Princeton University during 1964-80, a member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Labs during 1980-86 and on the faculty of the State University of New York at Stony Brook during 1986-2001. During 2001-2002 he was chief computer scientist of Symbol Technologies.