In 1932 his family returned to Greece, and he was educated on Spetsai
and at the Athens Polytechnic, where he studied engineering. In 1947 he
arrived in Paris, where he became a member of Le Corbusier's architectural
team, producing his first musical work, Metastasis, only in 1954,
based on the design for the surfaces of the Philips pavilion to be built
for the Brussels Exposition of 1958. This, with its divided strings and
mass effects, had an enormous influence; but in ensuing works he moved
on to find mathematical and computer means of handling large numbers of
events, drawing on (for example) Gaussian distribution (ST/10, Atrées),
Markovian chains (Analogiques) and game theory (Duel, Stratégie).
Other interests were in electronic music (Bohor, 1962), ancient
Greek drama (used in several settings) and instrumental virtuosity (Herma
for piano, 1964; Nomos alpha for cello, 1966). 
His
later output, chiefly of orchestral and instrumental pieces, is large,
many works from the mid-1970s onwards striking back from modernist complexity
to ostinatos and modes suggestive of folk music.