Monday, October 17, 2022

John Freely

John Freely (1926 –2017) was an American physicist, teacher, and author of popular travel and history books on Istanbul, Athens, Venice, Turkey, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire.

He was the father of writer and Turko-English literary translator Maureen Freely.

Freely was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up there and in Ireland. He dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 17 for the last two years of World War II, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China.

In 1960 he took up a post at Robert College (later Boğaziçi University) in Istanbul. He subsequently taught courses there in physics, the history of science and astronomy, including the course "The Emergence of Modern Science, East and West", with sojourns in New York City, Boston, London, Athens, Oxford, and Venice.

He returned to Boğaziçi University in 1993.

No comments:

Post a Comment