Vale Emeritus Professor Michael Halliday

The University of Sydney is saddened by the passing of Emeritus Professor Michael Halliday, founder of the Department of Linguistics, aged 93. Chair of the  Department of Linguistics  in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,  Associate Professor Monika Bednarek , wrote the following obituary for Michael Halliday: Michael Halliday, who founded the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney in 1976, has passed away at Uniting Wesley Heights Nursing Home in Manly - aged 93. While Professor of Linguistics at Sydney, Michael built up the Department, developing an undergraduate pass and honours program and the first Master of Applied Linguistics program in the Southern Hemisphere; and he played a key role in attracting an energetic cohort of PhD students. He retired in 1987, becoming Emeritus Professor of the University of Sydney. He had previously held chairs at the University of London, the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, and the University of Essex. Born in Yorkshire in 1925, Michael's undergraduate and postgraduate studies, which he pursued in Beijing, Guangzhou, Cambridge and London, focused on Chinese. He later concentrated on English (cohesion, lexicogrammar and prosodic phonology in particular), and is internationally acclaimed as the founder of the theory of language known as Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL).