Daniel Jones

(12 September 1881 – 4 December 1967)

He was a London-born British phonetician. A pupil of Paul Passy, professor of phonetics at the École des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne (University of Paris), Daniel Jones is considered by many to be the greatest phonetician of the early 20th century.[who?] He was head of the Department of Phonetics at University College, London.
In 1900, Jones studied briefly at William Tilly's Marburg Language Institute in Germany where he was first introduced to phonetics. In 1903 he received his BA degree in mathematics at Cambridge, converted by payment to MA in 1907. From 1905 to 1906, he studied at Paris under Paul Passy, who was one of the founders of the International Phonetic Association, and in 1911 married Passy's niece Cyrille Motte. He briefly took private lessons from the great British phonetician Henry Sweet. In 1907 he became a part-time lecturer at University College London, and was afterwards appointed to a full-time position. In 1912 he became the head of the Department of Phonetics and was appointed to a chair in 1921, a post he held until his retirement in 1949. From 1906 onwards, Jones was an active member of the International Phonetic Association, and was Assistant Secretary from 1907–1927, Secretary from 1927 to 1949 and President from 1950 to 1967.
In 1909, Jones wrote the short Pronunciation of English, a book which he later radically revised. The Outline of English Phonetics which followed in 1918 is the first truly comprehensive description of British Received Pronunciation, and indeed the first such description of the standard pronunciation of any language.