Mercouri Kanatzidis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1957. After obtaining a B. Sc from Aristotle University in Greece, he received his Ph D. in chemistry from the University of Iowa in 1984. He was a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University from 1985 to 1987 and is currently the the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. Mercouri moved to Northwestern in the fall of 2006 from Michigan State University where he was a University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry since 1987.
Mercouri also holds an appointment at Argonne National Laboratory and is the editor in chief of the Journal of Solid State Chemistry