Lewis, Geoffrey 1920-2008 (Geoffrey Lewis Lewis)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born June 19, 1920, in London, England; died February 12, 2008. Philologist, Turkish scholar, educator, and author. Lewis became one of the Western world's preeminent scholars of the language and culture of Turkey somewhat by accident. He attended Saint John's College, Oxford, as a student of the classics and spent his entire career at the university. He could not have studied Turkish, though, for there was no Turkish studies program there until he helped to create one. Lewis had studied Turkish as a hobby and practiced his skills as a British soldier in the Middle East during World War II. His graduate studies were occupied with Arabic and Persian, and he earned a doctorate in Islamic philosophy. It was not until 1964 that Turkish was recognized as a formal field of study at Oxford. In the meantime Lewis devoted much energy to promoting mutual understanding between England and Turkey. He taught humanities at Robert College in Istanbul throughout the 1960s and remained active at home as an officer of the British-Turkish Mixed Commission, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Anglo-Turkish Society, and as a patron of the publishing body known as the E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust. In England, Lewis retired from teaching in 1987, but he continued to visit Turkey as often as possible, and as recently as 2007. He was highly decorated in both countries; he received the Order of Merit of the Turkish Republic in 1998, the same year that he was decorated a companion of the prestigious British Order of Saint Michael and Saint George. Lewis was fascinated by languages and was fluent in several, including multiple Turkic languages. In his quest to bring East and West together, he wrote Teach Yourself Turkish, originally published in 1953, Turkey (1955), and Turkish Grammar (1967). All of these books were revised several times over the years. Lewis also wrote other, more academic books, from Plotiniana Arabica (1959) to The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (1999). British publishers often used his full name, Geoffrey Lewis Lewis.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Balim-Harding, Çigdem, and Colin Imber, editors, The Balance of Truth: Essays in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Lewis, Isis Press (Istanbul, Turkey), 2000.

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), February 21, 2008, p. 59.