Michael Hatzakis, semiconductor industry pioneer

Although this opinion paper tracks the career of Mike Hatzakis (as he liked to be called), and explains the impact he made on the IT industry, it is not intended to be comprehensive insofar as the work that was underway during his career is concerned. Thus, the intent is not to cite all relevant work in the field of Semiconductor lithography, where Mike made such an impact, but to provide a historic and human perspective of this remarkable man from the land of the Minotaur (Crete) and his career, the work he championed in his labs in the US and later Greece and his very human approach to science, technology, and to people. [Display omitted] [Display omitted] •Paper reviews the history of a pioneer in the IT Lithography domain•It provides a combination of the innovations that he was responsible for and the environment he created around him•It explains how he worked, how he influenced others and how far ahead of his time he was working with his colleagues at the IBM TJ Watson Research Centre•It is not the usual temporal evolution of a technology, rather it contains some of the highlights of Mike's accomplishments which focused not only on science and technology, but on their implementation in production•As such, one of the reviewers suggested that MNE could devote a section of its publication to such histories, which are much more approachable for a broader audience.