Konstantinos Vovolinis was born in Athens on 5 January 1913. He read law at the University of Athens. During his studies, he began his career as journalist and contributor to the newspapers Χρόνος του Πειραιά [Time of Piraeus], Νέον Κράτος [New State], Ελεύθερος Άνθρωπος [Free Man], Νέον Φως [New Light] and the journals Εργασία [Labour] and Βιομηχανική Επιθεώρησις [Viomichaniki Epitheorissis/Industrial Review]. Apart from his work as a journalist, he was also actively involved in the Greek political scene. In 1938, he assumed the functions of Secretary-General of the Municipality of Piraeus, a post from which he was dismissed in 1941 by the Occupation government for disobedience to the regime. With the outbreak of the Greco-Italian War, he was recruited and served in the army, where he raised to the rank of lance corporal, until the German invasion in April 1941. During the Axis Occupation, he joined the National Resistance. In May 1941, together with journalists Lazaros Piniatoglou and Ioannis Milios, he established the resistance group “Ελληνικόν Αίμα” [Hellenic Blood], which was placed under the spiritual leadership of the then Archbishop of Athens and all Greece Chryssanthos. In June 1942, the three partners established and edited the underground newspaper under the same name. In 1952, K. Vovolinis was elected [as Archival description factsheet, p. 1/6] Member of Parliament for Alexandros Papagos’s “Συναγερμός” [“Greek Rally”] party in the constituency of Piraeus and Islands and re-elected for Spyridon Markezinis’s “Κόμμα Προοδευτικών” [“Progressive Party”] in 1961. He served as Secretary-General of the Hellenic Parliament in 1952-1953, and as State Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office from 1968 to 1970. He was a member and special secretary of the Parnassos Literary Society, advisor to and dean of the United Nations Association of Greece and member of the Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers (ESIEA), the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, the Athens Club, and several other associations. He was also a prolific writer. Some of his works (in Greek) include: “Μυστικές Εκδόσεις” [Secret Publications] (Athens 1945), “Το Χρονικόν του Παρνασσού” [The Chronicle of the Parnassos Literary Society] (Athens 1951, honourable mention from the Academy of Athens) and “Η Εκκλησία εις τον αγώνα της Ελευθερίας” [The Church in the struggle for Freedom] (Athens 1952, praise award from the Academy of Athens). From the early 1950s, K. Vovolinis began gathering material to write the biographies of distinguished figures from the country’s public life and the economic and social history of Greece, starting with the first Governor, Ioannis Kapodistrias. In 1958, together with his brother Spyros, publisher and editor-in-chief of the magazine “Viomichaniki Epitheorissis” [Industrial Review], he embarked on the project of compiling and publishing the dictionary Μέγα Ελληνικόν Βιογραφικόν Λεξικόν [Great Greek Biographical Dictionary] (1958-1962), for which the two brothers were awarded an Academy of Athens Prize in 1964. In recognition of his lifetime achievement and overall contribution, K. Vovolinis was awarded, among other decorations, the Gold Cross of the Order of the Phoenix the War Cross, the National Resistance Medal, the Gold Crosses of the Second and Third Orders of Saint Mark, the Gold Medal of the Sacred City of Missolonghi, the “Christos Kapsalis” medal and the Greco-Italian War Medal. He died on 10 March 1970.