John Lions (January 19 1937 in Sydney, Australia – December 5, 1998 in Sydney) was an Australian computer scientist. He is best known as the author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book.
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Early life
Lions gained a degree with first-class honours from the University of Sydney in 1959. He applied, and received a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge where he earned his doctorate on Control engineering in 1963. After his graduation, he worked at the consulting firm KCS Ltd in Toronto, Canada. In 1967, he briefly took a position at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada before moving on to working for Burroughs in Los Angeles as a Systems Analyst.
Later life
In 1972 he moved back to Sydney, Australia and became a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales. In 1980, he was promoted to Associate Professor and apart from sabbaticals in 1978, 1983 and 1989 at Bell Laboratories, he remained at the school until retiring in 1995 due to bad health.
Work
- His most famous work, the Lions Book, was written as course notes for his operating systems course at UNSW.
- Lions organised the Australian UNIX Users' Group and was its founding president from 1984 to 1986.
- Lions was involved in the setting up of an annual conference for academics, the Australian Computer Science Conference and he was the editor of the Australian Computer Journal for six years and was made a fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution.
Personal life
John Lions was married to Marianne and had two children, Katherine and Elizabeth.
External links
- In Memoriam: John Lions (Peter H. Salus, USENIX News, 22 March 1999)
- Code Critic (Rachel Chalmers, Salon 30 November 1999)
- The John Lions Award For Research Work in Open Systems (Australian Unix Users' Group)
- The John Lions Chair in Operating Systems (University of New South Wales)
