John Lyons

Who is John Lyons?

Sir John Lyons, LittD, FBA, is an English linguist, working on semantics.

John Lyons was born and bought up in Stretford, Manchester. He was initially educated at St Ann's RC School, Stretford before winning a scholarship to St Bede's College, Manchester, joining at September 1943. In July 1950, Lyons progressed to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took a degree in Classics in 1953 and a Diploma in Education in 1954. After doing his national service in the navy for two years, studying Russian as a Coder, and commissioned as a Midshipman, he returned to Cambridge as a PhD student in 1956. His supervisor was W. Sidney Allen. The following year he was made a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was also awarded a one-year Rockefeller Scholarship to Yale, but declined for the more opportunistic academic position in linguistics that was rare in those days in Britain. Lyons moved from Cambridge to SOAS in London, where R. H. Robins was his PhD supervisor. In the summer of 1960, Lyons went to Indiana University to work in a machine translation project; he was chosen because of his expertise in Russian and linguistics.