Cleanthes A. Nicolaides (CAN) was born in Athens, Greece, on December 31, 1946. He obtained his high school diploma from Athens College in June 1965, and received his university education and research training at Amherst College, USA, (B.A. June 1968), and at Yale University, USA, (Ph.D in Theoretical Physical Chemistry, June 1971). His academic career started in 1971 at Yale, first as a postdoc, then as a Lecturer, and then as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Science and Engineering. At the end of 1975 he accepted an invitation from the National Hellenic Research Foundation (NHRF) to become the founding Director of the first research institute in Greece in the area of Theoretical Chemistry.

He returned to Athens at the beginning of 1977, after spending a year at the Research Institute for Physics, Stockholm, Sweden, as a NORDITA visiting professor. In 1979, upon his proposal, the governing board of the NHRF decided the expansion of the institute in order to cover experimental areas of laser and of materials science. It was renamed to Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute (TPCI), its current name. CAN held the position of the institute's director until 1995. Since then, he has remained at the TPCI as director of research - emeritus. In parallel, from 1982 to 1987 he was professor of Physics at the University of Crete, Greece. In 1987, he was elected professor of Physics at the National Technical University of Athens, a position from which he resigned in 2008. During the period 1980 - 1999, he spent short periods of a few months at Amherst College (USA), Michigan Technological University (USA), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Tromsø University (Norway), and Imperial College (UK), as visiting professor/scientist.

His research interests and activities have been mostly in areas of Quantum Chemistry and of theoretical Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Chemical Physics. He is author or co-author of more than 350 research papers in journals and in books.