Tyree

"If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall."

―Indiana Jones^[src]

Dr. Tyree was a professor of philosophy at Barnett College. (The real Dr. Tyree was Harrison Ford's philosophy teacher and mentor at Ripon College.)

Biography

In 1938, Dr. Tyree was teaching a philosophy course in the same building that Professor Jones taught his class on archaeology. Jones once told his class that if they were looking for truth and not fact, he jokingly said they should try Tyree's course and not Jones'.

Behind the scenes

Indiana Jones' line about Dr. Tyree is a reference to actor Harrison Ford's own life experience. While attending Ripon College in Wisconsin, Ford took a logic and philosophy course from Dr. William Tyree, head of the philosophy department, and they became friends. After Ford had dropped out of Ripon College, he contacted Tyree to write a letter to the war board, which Tyree declined to do, which led to a rift between Ford and the Ripon College community. William E. Tyree was a professor of philosophy at Ripon College from 1950 to 1983, and set up a graduate scholarship in his name. Tyree passed away on January 2, 2016 at age 98.

In the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade novelization, Tyree was named Peterman.