Michael Aris (June 18, 1940 - March 27, 1999) was an academic and lecturer in Asian history at St John's College, Oxford. In the early 1970s he met Aung San Suu Kyi and the two married and settled to raise their two sons in a quiet life in North Oxford . In 1988 Suu Kyi returned to Burma at first to tend for her mother but later to lead the pro-democracy movement. St John's College provided Aris with an extended leave of absence as a fellow on full stipend so that he could lobby for his wife's cause.
In 1997 Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The Burmese government would not grant him a visa to visit Burma, and Aung San Suu Kyi - at that time temporarily free from house arrest - was unwilling to leave the country, believing that she would be refused re-entry. Aris died in 1999.
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