October 2016
was born in Amphissa, Greece, in 1943. He obtained his medical degree from Thessaloniki University in 1967 and his doctoral thesis from Athens University in 1977. After a three-year internship in Internal Medicine at the Red Cross Hospital of Athens, he completed a three-year residency in Radiology at Evagelismos Hospital in Athens and did a 2-year fellowship at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford (1977–1979). He served the Hellenic Air Forces Hospital in Athens between 1975 and 1987, where he was head of the Radiology Department after 1981.
He was elected Associate Professor of Radiology of the University of Crete in 1986, and since 1990 he has been Professor and Chairman of the Department of Radiology. He has served as the first Medical Director at the University Hospital of Crete (1997–1999) and spent two terms as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Crete (1999–2001 and 2001–2003).
Professor Gourtsoyiannis is the founding father of the Hellenic College of Academic Radiology. He has served as its President from 1997 until 2001 and he is its Honorary President. He is also a founding member of the European Society of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology (ESGAR). He was President of two of the annual ESGAR meetings (1990, 1996), President of the Society (1997–2000), and President of the joint European (ESGAR) and American (SGR) Abdominal congress in 2006.
His greatest interest has been in the radiology of diseases of the small intestine, and he is currently contributing to the evaluation of small bowel imaging with MR. His work in Radiological-Pathologic Correlation spurred him on to mastermind ECR’s Categorical Course and Syllabi in this discipline, introducing Radiological-Pathologic Correlation at ECR. An active researcher, he has published more than 250 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals and he has written or co-written 28 book chapters.
He has served on the Editorial Board of numerous journals, including Abdominal Imaging, Investigative Radiology, Acta Radiologica and Magnetic Resonance in Medical Science. He has also been the editor of Hellenic Radiology. He is currently section editor of European Radiology and a reviewer for several national and international scientific journals on medical imaging and gastrointestinal diseases. Last but not least, he is also the editor or co-editor of 3 books, Imaging of Small Bowel Tumors (Elsevier, 1997), Small Bowel Imaging (Springer-Verlag, 2003) and Radiologic-Pathologic Correlations (Springer-Verlag, 2005).
Nicholas Gourtsoyiannis has been visiting professor at 23 Universities and he has delivered more than 250 invited lectures worldwide. In recognition of his international achievements and the excellence of his work, he has been awarded honorary membership by the following societies:
the Radiological Society of North America, the British Institute of Radiology, the French Society of Radiology, the Radiological Society of Switzerland, the Austrian Society of Radiology, the Italian Society of Medical Radiology, the Royal Belgian Radiological Society, the Argentinean Society of Radiology, the Bulgarian Association of Radiology, the Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina Radiologists, the Turkish Radiological Society, the Hungarian Society of Radiology, the Nordic Radiological Society, the Swedish Society of Radiology and the Polish Society of Medical Radiology.
He has also received honorary fellowships from the Royal College of Radiologists (UK) and the Royal College of Surgeons (Ireland), and he is a member of the Russian academy of medical sciences. He is the recipient of the 2000 Gold Medal of ESGAR, the 2001 Olson Medal of Sweden, the 2003 Schinz Medal of Switzerland, the first Gold Medal of the Hellenic Society of Radiology in 2004 and the Boris Rajewsky Medal of the EAR in 2007.
He was President of ECR in 2003 and chairman of the ECR executive committee in 2004. From 1999 to 2003 he was Chairman of the Subspecialties Committee of the EAR and from 2004 to 2007 he was President of the European Association of Radiology (EAR). He introduced the Electronic Presentation Online System (EPOS™) and the European School of Radiology (ESOR), and he masterminded the creation of the European Society of Radiology (ESR). Nicholas Gourtsoyiannis was the first President of the European Society of Radiology (Dec 2006 to March 2007). He is now the Scientific/Educational Director of the European School of Radiology and currently serves as Secretary General of the International Society of Radiology.
He and his wife Emmy have two children, Christos and Sofia, who also is a radiologist.
In recognition of his exceptional achievements in radiology, particularly in the field of gastrointestinal imaging, as well as his leadership and pivotal role in the creation of ESR, Prof. Nicholas Gourtsoyiannis is awarded the Gold Medal of the European Society of Radiology.
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