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Wing-tsit Chan (; 18 August 1901 – 12 August 1994) was a Chinese scholar and professor best known for his studies of Chinese philosophy and his of Chinese philosophical texts. Chan was born in China in 1901 and went to the United States in 1924, earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1929. Chan taught at Dartmouth College and Chatham University for most of his academic career. Chan's 1963 book A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy was highly influential in the English-speaking world, and was often used as a source for quotations from Chinese philosophical classics.
On his return to China in 1929, Chan received an appointment at Lingnan, which in 1927 had been reconstituted as Lingnan University, and served as its dean of the faculty from 1929 to 1936. In 1935 the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa offered him a visiting appointment. In 1937 he moved to Honolulu and taught there until 1942. He then taught at Dartmouth College from 1942 to 1966. He was Professor Emeritus of Chinese Philosophy and Culture at Dartmouth College, and from 1966 to 1982, Anna R.D. Gillespie Professor of Philosophy at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chinese translation of an oral memoir by Chan recorded from June, 1981 to June, 1983, and compiled and transcribed by Irene Bloom In retirement, Chan taught part-time at Chatham and at Columbia University.
Chan was the author of A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, one of the most influential sources in the field of Asian studies, and of hundreds of books and articles in both English and Chinese on Chinese philosophy and religion. He was a leading translator of Chinese philosophical texts into English in the 20th century. He was also the author of articles on Chinese philosophy, Classical Confucian texts, Ou-Yang Hsiu, and Wang Yang-Ming in the Macropedia of the Encyclopædia Britannica (15th edition, 1977 imprint). He expressed particular satisfaction over his chapter, The path to wisdom: Chinese philosophy and religion, in the book, Half the World: The History and Culture of China and Japan (1973), edited by Arnold J. Toynbee. He had received numerous academic honors and was a member of the Academia Sinica.
Chan died in Pittsburgh on August 12, 1994.
The W.T. Chan Fellowships Program was established in his memory by the Lingnan Foundation in 2000, and fellowships are awarded annually to students of Lingnan University (Hong Kong) and Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou).
Personal life
He married Wai Hing (died 1993) and is survived by a daughter, Jan Thomas Chan of Berkeley, California; two sons, Lo-Yi Chan, of New York, and Gordon Chan, of Mobile, Alabama, and five grandchildren.
Selected works
Honors
External links
Categories: 1901 Births, 1994 Deaths, 20th-century Chinese Historians, Dartmouth College Faculty, Chinese Sinologists, Scholars Of Ancient Chinese Philosophy, Harvard University Alumni, Chatham University Faculty, University Of Hawaiʻi At Mānoa Faculty, People From Kaiping, Members Of Academia Sinica, American People Of Chinese Descent
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