John Myles Dillon is an Irish classicist, philosopher and author based in Dublin, Ireland.  After studying the Classics at Oxford, John completed a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, where he then joined the Faculty in 1969. Prior to that, after graduating from Oxford in 1961, he spent some years teaching English in Ethiopia, which became the inspiration for his debut novel. His chief area of academic interest is the philosophy of Plato and the tradition deriving from him, on which he has written a number of books, about which see more here. His area of research lies in the history of Platonism from the Old Academy to the Renaissance, and also Early Christianity.

Upon his return from Berkeley in 1980, he took up the Regius Chair of Greek  in Trinity College Dublin – a position he held until his retirement in 2006.  John Dillon was elected a member of the Academy of Athens on 15 June 2010.  He is now Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College, Dublin, and recently played a major role in the foundation of The Dublin Plato Centre, which is based on the campus.

A second edition of his debut novel, The Scent of Eucalyptus, was published in 2019, and  in 2020, he took time over the lock down periods to compile his newest book, The Lockdown Papers, which comprises a selection of his social and political essays, published over four decades in Irish newspapers.

In 2021, John Dillon was elected to The British Academy, the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences.  In his academic writing capacity, he is currently acting as general editor, with Professor Andrew Smith, of a series of translations of the tractates of Plotinus, with commentaries, for Parmenides Press, of which ten volumes have so far been published.

He lives with his wife Jean near Howth Head in Dublin.​