Elias Panayiotis Gyftopoulos (Greek: Ηλίας Παναγιώτης Γυφτόπουλος; July 4, 1927 – June 23, 2012) was a Greek-American engineer who gave contributions to Thermodynamics both in its general formulation and its quantum foundations.Gyftopoulos graduated in Mechanical and Electrical engineering in 1953 at the National Technical University of Athens, and became Doctor of Science in Electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958.