He was born in Lapithos, Cyprus, and in 1958 received his bachelor's degree from the University of London. His 1960 PhD from Royal Holloway on "Problems in Relativity Theory and Relativistic Cosmology" was supervised by William McCrea. After a postdoc with John L Synge at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, he settled at Trinity College Dublin in 1962. There he spent over four decades, rising to the rank of senior fellow and pro-chancellor. In 1964 he was awarded a Master of Arts (juri officii).