Chan Wing-tsit was born on 18 August 1901 in
Kaiping, a city in China's southern
Guangdong Province. In 1916 he enrolled at
Canton Christian College (later
Lingnan University) near Canton (modern
Guangzhou). After graduating with a
bachelor's degree from Lingnan, he began his graduate studies at
Harvard University in 1924. There he studied with
Irving Babbitt,
William Ernest Hocking, and
Alfred North Whitehead, and was advised by
James Haughton Woods, an eminent
Sanskritist and translator of the
Yoga Sutra. Chan received his
Ph.D. in
Philosophy and
Chinese Culture in 1929. 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. 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==