Background
Neil MacKenzie (he never used his given first name) was born in London in 1926 and attended a succession of schools in Southern England.
Neil MacKenzie (he never used his given first name) was born in London in 1926 and attended a succession of schools in Southern England.
His Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, Kurdish Dialect Studies (1957, published 1961–1962), established his reputation as an Iranist and linguist.
In 1943, aged 17, he enlisted in the British Army. In 1945 and 1946 he served as a soldier on the North-West Frontier Province of British India, where he learned Pashto. Thus acquainted with Iranian languages, he acquired a Bachelor"s degree in New Persian and a Master"s degree in Oldand Middle Persian at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London.
At SOAS, MacKenzie was appointed Lecturer in Kurdish in 1955, a position that was extended to include all Iranian languages in 1961.
He was promoted to Reader in 1965, a post he held until 1975 when he received an appointment as Chair of Oriental Philology at the University of Göttingen in Germany. MacKenzie retired from that position in 1994 and settled in Bangor, North Wales.
Upon his return to Britain, MacKenzie was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy. David Neil MacKenzie died on 13 October 2001 in Bangor, aged 75.