John Freely (26 June 1926 – 20 April 2017[1]) 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.[2]
In 1947, Freely married Dolores "Toots" Stanley after they had agreed to devote their lives to travel.[3][4] He died in the UK in 2015 and his remains were interred in
Feriköy Protestant Cemetery in Istanbul.[5]
Academic career
Freely received his PhD in physics at
New York University, and later pursued his postdoctoral studies at
Oxford University under
Alistair Cameron Crombie, the pioneering researcher in the history of Medieval European science. The principal idea he inherited from Crombie was "the continuity of western European science from the Dark Ages through Copernicus, Galileo and Newton". Following his postdoctoral work, he went in 1960 to
Istanbul, Turkey, and took up a post at
Robert College (later
Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University). He subsequently taught courses there in physics and the
history of science and
astronomy, including the course "The Emergence of Modern Science, East and West",[6] with sojourns in
New York City,
Boston,
London,
Athens,
Oxford, and
Venice. He returned to Boğaziçi University in 1993.
Writing life
Freely was the author of more than 40 books, many of them either histories of Istanbul and Turkey, accounts of the lives of significant figures of the Ottoman Empire or travel guides, especially about Istanbul. Together with Hilary Sumner-Boyd, a colleague from Boğaziçi University, Freely published Strolling Through Istanbul: A Guide to the City in 1972. While sales were initially slow, they picked up as travel to Istanbul increased, and by the early 2000s it was regarded as a classic of the guidebook genre for its blending of the academically rigorous with an accessible, even lively, writing style. It continues in print fifty years after its initial publication.[3]
Among the more unusual topics he wrote about were the lives of
Cem Sultan, the third son of Sultan Mehmet II who laid claim to the Ottoman throne but was defeated and ended his life in exile in Europe; and
Sabbetai Zevi, the so-called Jewish Messiah from
Smyrna (now
İzmir), who eventually converted, at least on the surface, to Islam and whose followers became known as the
Dönme.