[1] He was a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and formerly Professor and Head of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge (1980–2001).
Matthews was an early follower of Noam Chomsky, but lost enthusiasm for the "generative enterprise" during the 1960s.
He described the Chomskyan revolution as "the Best Thing that has happened to linguistics in the past 2500 years" (with his tongue squarely in his cheek, of course).
[1] But he also wrote that dominance of various Chomskyan ideas is not "a Good Thing, and I would not be disappointed if my study of their origins were to lead more scholars to question them".
[3] Peter Hugoe Matthews died on 7 April 2023, at the age of 89.