Geoffrey Lewis (scholar)

Geoffrey Lewis Lewis CMG FBA (19 June 1920 – 12 February 2008) was an English Professor of the Turkish language at the University of Oxford. He was well known as the author of Teach Yourself Turkish and academic books about Turkish and Turkey.

Early life and education

Lewis was born in London, England in 1920 and educated at University College School and St John's College, Oxford (MA 1945, DPhil 1950; James Mew Arabic Scholar, 1947).

At St John's College Lewis initially studied classics. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he served from 1940 to 1945 as a radar operator in the Royal Air Force. Posted primarily in Libya and Egypt, he returned to Oxford afterwards and switched his studies to Arabic and Persian.

He initially studied Turkish as a hobby: Turkish was not taught at Oxford before Lewis was appointed to his academic post.

Career

• Lecturer in Turkish, 1950–54, Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies, 1954–64, Senior Lecturer in Turkish, 1964–86, Oxford
• Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford, 1961. ^[1]
• Visiting Professor: Robert College, Istanbul, 1959–68; Princeton University, 1970–71, 1974; UCLA, 1975
• British Academy Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Turkey, 1984
• Professor of Turkish, University of Oxford, 1986.

Honours

• Vice-President, 1972–2003, President, 2003–2008, Anglo-Turkish Society
• Turkish Government Certificate of Merit, 1973
• FBA 1979
• President, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 1981–83 (award for outstanding contributions for many years to Middle Eastern studies in UK, 2005).
• President, B'nai B'rith Oxford Lodge, 1989
• Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Exceptional Service Plaque, 1991
• Order of Merit of the Turkish Republic (Liyakat Nişanı), 1998
• Honorary doctorates from the University of Istanbul and the Bosphorus University
• CMG 1999^[2]
• Gunnar Jarring Lecturer, Stockholm, 2002

Publications

• Teach Yourself Turkish, 1953, 2nd edition 1989
• Modern Turkey, 1955, 4th edition 1974
• (trans., with annotations) Katib Chelebi, The Balance of Truth, 1957
• Plotiniana Arabica, 1959
• (with Barbara Hodge) A Study in Education for International Misunderstanding (Cyprus School History Textbooks), 1966
• Turkish Grammar, 1967, Second edition 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-870036-9.
• (with M. S. Spink) Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments, 1973
• The Book of Dede Korkut, 1974
• The Atatürk I Knew, 1981
• Thickhead and other Turkish Stories, 1988
• Just a Diplomat, 1992
• The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. 1999 Oxford: Oxford University Press

Lewis' Teach Yourself Turkish (last edition 1994) has been the de facto standard text for students of Turkish for many years. The same for Lewis' Turkish Grammar. The recent (2006,2009,2015) editions of Oztopcu's Elementary Turkish are more contemporary and lesson-oriented, but Lewis still commands wide appeal.

References

• Who's Who (UK)
• Obituary, The Times, 20 February 2008
• Obituary, The Guardian, 11 March 2008