John E. Ffowcs Williams was born on May 25, 1935. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Southampton, and was awarded the M.A. and Sc.D. degrees by Cambridge University.He was Senior Scientist at Bolt, Beranek and Newman from 1962 to 1964. He then went to the Imperial College of Science and Technology, where he was Reader in Applied Mathematics from 1964 to 1969 and Rolls-Royce Professor of Theoretical Acoustics from 1969 to 1972. Since then, he has been Rank Professor of Acoustics in the Department of Engineering of Cambridge University and Professorial Fellow of Emmanuel College.
Professor Ffowcs Williams is a fellow of a number of learned societies, including the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Physics, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is a winner of the AIAA Aeronautical Medal and the Rayleigh Gold Medal of the Institute of Acoustics and was last year elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.