The Department of Physics admitted its first undergraduate students in 1978, and its first permanent faculty in 1980. As of September 2024, it numbers 20 faculty members and about 25 scientists in visiting or project-funded positions. Housed in temporary buildings near Knossos during the first years of its operation, in 1995 the Department moved to its permanent campus, situated eight kilometers south-west of the city of Heraklion. The modern building of the Deparment, which also houses the Dept. of Biology, was designed by Prof. Panos Koulermos.
In addition to its teaching and administrative responsibilities, the physics faculty engage in the following research areas:
- Applied physics
- Astrophysics and space physics
- Atomic, molecular, and optical physics
- Condensed matter physics
- Nuclear and elementary particle physics
The Department of Physics has developed over the years a close and productive collaboration with the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), while at the same time having collaborative research links with several other research establishments in Europe and overseas. Up until 2008 the Department also hosted Crete University Press, a publishing house it helped found in 1985 with the support of the Pancretan Association of America.
Since 1986 the Department also operates Skinakas Observatory, which was built as a collaboration between the University of Crete, FORTH and the Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik of Germany and is located at an altitude of 1760m nearly 50km from Heraklion. In 2019 a new formal collabortion between the Dept. of Physics and the newly founded Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH, was established regarding the operation of the Observatory, which currently operates three optical telescopes.
