Antonis Samaras was born in 1951 in Athens, Greece. He attended Athens College and graduated from Amherst College in 1974 with a degree in economics and Harvard University in 1976 with an MBA. Samaras' father was a professor of cardiology and his mother was the granddaughter of author Penelope Delta. His brother is an architect and his uncle was a long-standing member of parliament in the 1950s-1960s.