John Perry was born in Lincoln, Nebraska 1943. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Doane College (Crete, Nebraska) in 1964 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Cornell University in 1968. He taught at UCLA 1968-1974; at Stanford from 1974. He was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize in 1999. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
Perry recently retired as Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. In 2004, he became co-host, with Kenneth Taylor, of Philosophy Talk, the radio program that "questions everything… except your intelligence." He is also part of the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) — an independent research center founded in 1983.