John Lions

John Lions (19 January 1937 – 5 December 1998) 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.

John Lions (standing) with his students in 1980

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, Ontario, 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 (UNSW). 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.

Posthumous honours

John Lions Chair in Computer Science

After his death, John O'Brien, Steve Jenkin, Chris Maltby and Greg Rose, former students of Lions, commenced a campaign to raise funds to create a chair in his name at UNSW, the John Lions Chair of Operating Systems. With donations from many UNSW alumni, corporations, Usenix, Linux Australia, the chair was created in 2006, becoming the first chair at UNSW funded by contributions from alumni. In 2009, Gernot Heiser became the inaugural John Lions Chair.

John Lions Garden

In 2002, UNSW dedicated the John Lions Garden in front of the new Computer Science and Engineering building to Lions' memory.

John Lions Award for Contribution to Open Software

In 2011, The School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW initiated the John Lions Award for Contribution to Open Software. The Prize is open to high school and undergraduate university students enrolled in an Australian secondary or tertiary institution. Full-time and part-time students are eligible, as well as local and internationals students. The annual prize is valued at $1,000.

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)