John Sinclair Morrison

{{Short description|English classicist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox person

| honorific-suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|CBE|FBA}}

| name = John Sinclair Morrison

| image = John Sinclar Morrison.png

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1913|06|15|df=y}}

| birth_place = Lindfield, West Sussex, England

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2000|10|25|1913|06|15|df=y}}

| occupation = English classicist

}}

John Sinclair Morrison {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CBE}} (15 June 1913 – 25 October 2000) was an English classicist whose work led to the reconstruction of an Athenian Trireme, an ancient oared warship.

From Lindfield, Sussex, Morrison was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity College, Cambridge.{{Who's Who | title = MORRISON, John Sinclair | id = U180660 | type = was | volume = 2025 | edition = online}} He was professor of Greek and head of the classics department at the University of Durham from 1945 to 1950. He was a Tutor at Trinity from 1950 to 1960, then vice-master of Churchill College, from 1960 to 1965.when he became the first President of University College, later renamed Wolfson College.

He was considered an expert on the Greek trireme, the oared warship of the Athenian classical golden age, and is best known as one of the founders in 1982, with Charles Willink, another classics teacher, John Coates, a naval architect, and Frank Welsh, a banker, of the Trireme Trust, to test his theories about the Athenian trireme by building a full-size reconstruction. In 1984, the Greek Government promised funding, and in 1987 the Olympias was commissioned.

With R. T. Williams, Morrison wrote Greek Oared Ships: 900–322 BC;Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1968; 2nd edition with N. B. Rankov as additional contributor, 1986 Long Ships and Round Ships (1980);HMSO, London, 1980 with John Coates, The Athenian Trireme: the History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship (1986);Cambridge University Press, 1986 with J. F. Coates, Greek and Roman Oared Warships (1996);Oxbow Books, Oxford, 1996 and other works.

His elder daughter, Annis Garfield, the classicist and author, was an alumna of Girton College, and was voted the most beautiful girl in Cambridge in 1968.{{cite news|newspaper=Varsity|date=November 1968}}{{Page needed|date=March 2012}}

In 1991 he was awarded the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum, jointly with John Coates.

In 1989, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) by the University of Bath.{{cite web |url=http://www.bath.ac.uk/ceremonies/hongrads/ |title=Honorary Graduates 1989 to present |publisher=University of Bath |work=bath.ac.uk |accessdate=18 February 2012 |archive-date=19 December 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151219000643/http://www.bath.ac.uk/ceremonies/hongrads/ |url-status=dead }}

He died on 25 October 2000 at the age of 87.