John Freely

John Freely (born 1926) is an American physicist, teacher, and author of popular travel and history books on Istanbul, Athens, Venice, Turkey, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire. He is the father of writer and Turkish-to-English literary translator Maureen Freely.

Freely was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up there and in Ireland. He dropped out of high school and joined the U.S. Navy at age 17 for the last two years of World War II, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China. He did his undergraduate work at the traditional American Catholic college, Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, under the G.I. Bill.

Academic life

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 taught courses in history and astronomy at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, including the course, "The Emergence of Modern Science, East and West".

Since 1960 he has taught physics and the history of science at Boğaziçi University (formerly Robert College) in Istanbul, with sojourns in New York City, Boston, London, Athens, Oxford, and Venice. He returned to Boğaziçi University in 1993. He is the author of over 40 books.

Travel guides:

• Strolling Through Istanbul: A Guide to the City (1972; 4th ed. 1987), with Hilary Sumner-Boyd; (2009) Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• Complete Guide to Greece (1974), with Maureen Freely, Littlehampton Book Services Ltd
• Naxos: Ariadne's Isle (1976; 2nd ed., 1980), Lycabettus Press
• Blue Guide Istanbul (1983; 2nd ed., 1987; 3rd, 1991; 4th, 1997; 5th, 2000)
• Blue Guide Boston and Cambridge (1984; 2nd ed., 1994), A & C Black Publishers Ltd
• The Companion Guide to Turkey (1984; 2nd ed., 1996), Boydell Press
• Crete (1988), Weidenfeld & Nicolson; (New ed., 1989) New Amsterdam Books
• The Western Shores of Turkey: Discovering the Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts (1988), John Murray Pub Ltd; 2nd. ed., (2004), Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• Classical Turkey (1990; Series: Architectural Guides for Travellers), Viking
• Strolling Through Athens: Fourteen Unforgettable Walks through Europe's Oldest City (1991), Penguin; 2nd ed. (2004), Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• Strolling through Venice: The Definitive Walking Guidebook to 'La Serenissima' (1994, 2nd ed., 2008), Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• The Redhouse Guide to the Black Sea Coast of Turkey (1996); Photographs by Anthony E. Baker, Redhouse Press
• The Redhouse Guide to the Aegean Coast of Turkey (1996), Redhouse Press
• Crete: Discovering the 'Great Island' (1998); Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 2nd ed. (2008), Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• The Eastern Mediterranean Coast of Turkey (1999), Milet Publishing Ltd
• The Redhouse Guide to Western Interior of Turkey (1999), Cadogan Guides
• The Bosphorus (1999), Milet Publishing Ltd
• Turkey Around Marmara (1999), Cadogan Guides
• The Companion Guide to Istanbul and around the Marmara (2000), Companion Guides
• Galata: A Guide to Istanbul's Old Genoese Quarter Archaeology & Art Pubs (2000)
• The Greek Islands (2003), John Murray Pub Ltd
• The Companion Guide to Southern Turkey (2003), Companion Guides
• The Princes' Isles: A Guide (2005), Islander Editions/Adali Yayinlari
• The Cyclades: Discovering the Greek Islands of the Aegean (2006), I B Tauris & Co Ltd
• The Ionian Islands: Corfu, Cephalonia and Beyond (2008), I B Tauris & Co Ltd
• Istanbul: City of Two Continents (2008), with John Cleave, Didier Millet

History and science books:

• Stamboul Sketches (1974; reprinted by Eland in 2014)
• Istanbul: The Imperial City (1996)
• A History of Robert College: The American College for Girls and Boğaziçi University (2000), YKY,Two volumes
• Sinan: Architect of Suleyman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Golden Age (1992), with Augusto Romano Burelli, Thames & Hudson Ltd
• Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in Istanbul (1999)
• The Lost Messiah: In Search of the Mystical Rabbi Sabbatai Sevi (2001)
• Jem Sultan: The Adventures of a Captive Turkish Prince in Renaissance Europe (2004); Harpercollins
• The Emergence of Modern Science, East and West (2004), Istanbul: Boğaziçi University
• Byzantine Monuments of Istanbul (2004), with Ahmet S. Çakmak; Cambridge University Press
• John Freely's Istanbul (2003, ill. ed. 2006), Scala Publishers
• Storm on Horseback: The Seljuk Warriors of Turkey (2008); I B Tauris & Co Ltd
• Children of Achilles: The Greeks in Asia Minor Since the Days of Troy (2009); I B Tauris & Co Ltd
• The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II: Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (2009); Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World (2009)
• Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012)
• The Flame of Miletus: The Birth of Science in Ancient Greece (and How it Changed the World) (2012); I B Tauris & Co Ltd
• Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World (2010); I B Tauris & Co Ltd

Wrote foreword:

• Runciman, Steven, The Lost Capital of Byzantium: The History of Mistra and the Peloponnese (2009 reprint), Tauris Parke Paperbacks
• Stafford-Deitsch, Jeremy, Kingdoms of Ruin: The Art and Architectural Splendours of Ancient Turkey (2009)
• Bradford, Ernle, The Sultan's Admiral: Barbarossa - Pirate and Empire-Builder (2009), Tauris Parke Paperbacks