It is with deepest regret that the Foundation has to announce the death of Xanthos Menelaou. He will be dearly missed by all at the Foundation and by the members who knew him as an outstanding innovator who applied his personal knowledge to the full for the benefit of others.

Xanthos Menelaou was born in Nicosia, Cyprus during the Second World War, the first-born of the Menelaou family who were noted restaurateurs, but where Xanthos did not blend in well with this way of life. Even at an early age he was using his unusual talent for solving problems. As a teenager he was a gifted athlete with basic natural talent. He had to be as in those days even the national athletes of Greece and Cyprus had no financial support whatsoever from their nations. Not even a free bottle of milk he told people in later years, but where eventually through the athletes persistence they eventually got their huge reward.

But, with this natural talent he eventually emerged as Greece’s fastest person for the 100 metres and represented Greece in the Rome Olympics. Indeed, he held the Greek national 100metres sprint record for many years and it was not until financial resources and modern athletic training were afforded to Greek athletes that his record was eventually eclipsed.

Although Xanthos did not receive a medal at the Rome Olympics he was approached by a leading US coach after the competitions who said that he changed to the 400 metres he promised him that he would make him a future 400 metres Olympic champion. Unfortunately we and Xanthos would never know as he had already booked his passage to the United Kingdom to find a new life.

Therefore in the early 1960s he came to the United Kingdom with very little in personal wealth and only his thinking to provide him with any income. He enrolled as a trainee architect and eventually obtained the intermediate level of the Royal Institute of British Architects. During those early years he started a company that specialised in the evolving market of double-glazing (a new phenomena in those times). But not satisfied with the present market products he designed his own which due to financial restrictions the Magnet Joinery Company copied several years later and made a fortune out of the design.

Even with this drawback Xanthos Menelaou made a successful business in the London area.

But not satisfied by this life-style he embarked upon a lifetime of research and discovery that had been his hallmark from his very early days in Cyprus and the United Kingdom; always thinking about doing things differently, but better.

As an example, when the Space Shuttle exploded on take-off he started to look into the problem, solved it and sent it to NASA. Eventually this design was supplanted into the Shuttle’s design.

In 1992 at the now University of Westminster Xanthos single-handedly undertook a two week exhibition of his concept ‘Thermodynamic Architecture’ and where the students requested that his exhibition extended further. Therefore the exhibition became three weeks but where unlike the students the lecturers were not that interested. One can understand this as this exhibition was before the Rio Conference on Climate Change and no one really took a great deal of interest in energy and the environment at that time when it concerned advanced energy conservation in buildings. In those days Britain had plenty of North Sea Oil and the world had no real energy problems. It is unfortunate therefore that all UK institutions had not the same understanding as Xanthos at that time, as measures such as investment in renewables could have been undertaken at a much earlier date.

Out of this period came his radical change in thinking towards the construction industry and specifically his ‘Thermal Envelope’ concept, which will revolutionise how houses and building will be constructed in the 21st century. Unfortunately it will now not be Xanthos who will created this physical change but others.

At the start of the 21st century and for his beloved Cyprus he introduced the concept of a national tourism figurehead in the form of the Greek mythological figure Aphrodite, the ‘Goddess of Love’. This was to be the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower to the Cypriots but where the present government could not see further than their nose unlike their predecessors.

Throughout his life he was a prolific inventor and had at any one time at least six patents to his name. His concepts in structural components, nanostructures has yet to be fully understood.

Xanthos will be sadly missed but where the Foundation through its Scientific Discovery Newsletter is to publish his thinking and concepts over a non-specified period of time.

God bless Xanthos we say and where the world is a far lesser place without these leading innovative minds that literally change the way in which humankind thinks and progresses.