John Anthony Petropulos was an American historian of Modern Greek history. Petropulos was born in 1929 in Lewiston, Maine to Greek immigrants. He received his B.A. from Yale in 1951 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1963. He joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1958, where he taught Balkan and Middle Eastern history. He died in his office on May 3, 1999, allegedly while correcting student papers. Petropulos was president of the Modern Greek Studies Association from 1974-1976.