Thermo Electron founder Dr. George Hatsopoulous
In our very first Master Class — with the legendary inventor, entrepreneur and founder of high-tech giant Thermo Electron Corporation, Dr. George Hatsopoulos, in his labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — students from MIT, Harvard, Boston University, Tufts and Wellseley were enthralled with Dr. Hatsopoulos’ account of how he began his pursuit of becoming an inventor and a businessman when, as a teenager in Nazi-occupied Greece, he built and sold illegal radios and transmitters – a daring act which risked imprisonment and almost certain death for him and his family had he been discovered.
To hear how that led to winning a scholarship to MIT — where he pursued research (in defiance of his professors) that would lead to pioneering work on a thermionic energy conversion, the launch of a multi-billion dollar high-tech company, and, now that Dr. Hatsopoulos is semi-retired, the creation of an artificial heart — was an inspiring and unforgettable experience.
(For a glimpse of another Master Class with the formidable George Hatsopoulos, you can watch an excerpt of the video from a conversation with George Hatsopoulos part of a “Conversation with a CEO” series at MIT.)
A Master Class with
Dr. George Hatsopoulos
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
Master Class at MIT with Dr. George Hatsopoulos
Dr. George Hatsopoulos
Dr. George Hatsopoulos
Dr. George Hatsopoulos, is the Chairman and CEO of Pharos LLC, an organization devoted to creating new leading-edge technologies. Dr. Hatsopoulos is best known as the founder and chairman emeritus of Thermo Electron Corporation.
George Hatsopoulos served as Thermo Electron’s chairman and CEO from its founding in 1956 until his retirement in 1999, during which time he transformed a small laboratory into a world leader in analytical and monitoring instruments, as well as environmental monitoring and biomedical technologies. Under his leadership, Thermo Electron turned his pioneering invention of a thermionic converter – a compact device that converts heat directly into electricity without using any moving parts – into high technology ventures ranging from an ion propulsion system for a manned mission to Mars powered by nuclear reactors using thermionic converters of his design, to Thermo Cardiosystems’s Heart Mate, the world’s first implantable heart assist device – and spun out twenty-four publicly traded companies, growing Thermo Electron into an international company with over 24,000 employees in twenty-three countries.
Because of this track record of bringing technologies from the lab to the marketplace, Thermo Electron has been referred to as a “perpetual idea machine,” and described as sort of a miniature mutual fund, with its spinout strategy held up as an example of how to nurture a unique, entrepreneurial climate that allows employees to pursue their own ideas and develop profitable new businesses.
Following his retirement in 1999, George Hatsopoulos has maintained a remarkably active involvement in engineering education and creating high-tech start-ups. In 2000, the Hatsopoulos Laboratory for Micro-Fluid Dynamics was created at MIT. More recently, he started Pharos (a reference to the legendary ancient lighthouse) – which is primarily working to develop advanced medical devices, including an improved ventricular assist device (VAD) that is both affordable and superior to those currently available – is the chairman and co-founder of American DG Energy, a ‘virtual utility’ which is building on his previous work in the fields of power generation, and is a director of Cyberkinetics, whose engineers are “developing clinical products that are designed to turn thought into action by collecting and analyzing neural signals from the motor cortex, which is the part of the brain that controls muscle movement.”
George Hatsopoulos was on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1956 to 1962, and a senior lecturer there until 1990. He continues his association with the Institute as a Life Member of the Corporation and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Committee.
George Hatsopoulos has served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, including a term as chairman. In addition, Dr. Hatsopoulos has served as a member of the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee of Capital Formation and Regulatory Processes and the Advisory Committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
George Hatsopoulos is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and other scientific and technical organizations.
George Hatsopoulos is the recipient of numerous honors and awards in engineering, science, industry and academics – including the Heinz Award in Technology (1993), in recognition of his significant scientific and industrial accomplishments – and is the principal author of textbooks in thermodynamics and thermionic energy conversion as well as the author of over sixty articles in professional journals.
After growing up in Nazi-occupied Greece, George Hatsopoulos followed in his father’s footsteps by beginning his college studies at the National Technical University of Athens – known as Athens Polytechnic – where his uncles were faculty members. His original intent was to study electrical engineering, but he became fascinated with thermodynamics, and after winning a scholarship to attend he came to the United States to study mechanical engineering at MIT, where he received both his BS and MS degrees. After serving in the U.S. Army, he returned to MIT to earn his doctorate in Mechanical Engineering.
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