John Dyson was born on the 7th January 1941 in Meltham Mills, West Yorkshire, England, and later grew up in Harrogate and Leeds. The proudest moment of John's early life was meeting Freddie Trueman, who became one of the greatest fast bowlers of English cricket. John used a state scholarship to study at Kings College London, after hearing a radio lecture by D. M. McKay. He received a first class BSc Special Honours Degree in Physics in 1962, and began a Ph.D. at the University of Manchester Department of Astronomy after being attracted to astronomy by an article of Zdenek Kopal in the semi-popular journal New Scientist. John soon started work with Franz Kahn, and studied the possibility that the broad emission lines seen from the Orion Nebula were due to flows driven by the photoevaporation of neutral globules embedded in a HII region. John's thesis was entitled “The Age and Dynamics of the Orion Nebula“ and he passed his oral examination on 28th February 1966.