Athina Anastasaki

Abstract

Athina Anastasaki shares her name with the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, so it might be tempting to ascribe her chemical acumen to some divine source. But she attributes her success in science to a lifelong love of learning and the guidance of good mentors rather than any intervention from mythical figures. Anastasaki grew up in Athens, Greece, and spent her summers swimming and hiking on the island of Crete, where her parents were from. “I spent my best part of the year in Crete—I feel this is part of my soul,” she says. Anastasaki recalls a childhood spent looking over X-ray films with her mother, a radiologist, and doing schoolwork alongside her father, a geology professor, as he kept up with the literature in his field. This academic atmosphere meant that she learned to like studying—“but not because I was told to study,” she says. A high school