Hans Henrik August Bielenstein was born on 8 April 1920 in
Stockholm, Sweden. He attended private school in Stockholm and took the matriculation exam in 1939. After the outbreak of the
Winter War, 1939–40, he joined the
Swedish Voluntary Corps as a commando and fought the Russians in
Finnish Lapland. After his return, he entered the
Guards Regiment. In 1945, he decided to devote himself to Chinese studies and earned a Ph.D. in
sinology at
Stockholm University. He studied history and oriental studies under the tutelage of the renowned
Bernhard Karlgren. He earned his master's degree in 1945 and his
licentiate in 1947. He spent the year of 1952 as a research visitor at the
University of California, Berkeley. In 1952, Bielenstein was appointed head of the School of Oriental Languages in
Canberra University College in
Canberra,
Australia (since 1960 part of
Australian National University). Bielenstein was the first professor of modern or classical Chinese language anywhere in Australia. As Head of the School of Oriental Studies, he built up departments for the languages, literatures and history of China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India. In 1961, he moved to Columbia University in
New York City. From 1969 to 1977 he was chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. He was a
Guggenheim fellow in 1967–1968, became a Corresponding Member of the
Royal Academy of Literature, History, and Antiquity of Sweden in 1980, being appointed to the Dean Lung Chair of Chinese at Columbia University in 1985. From 1994 to 1995, he was the Master of
Holland Lodge. He retired in 1990 and celebrated his 61st wedding anniversary in 2015. Bielenstein's many books and articles were concerned with Chinese,
historiography, history and
demography. His area of concentration was the administrative and economic history of early imperial China from the Han dynasty to the
Song dynasty. Along with the works of
Michael Loewe, Bielenstein's
Bureaucracy of Han Times (1980) is one of the most important English-language works on the
government of the Han dynasty. He died in New York City on 8 March 2015. He remained a Swedish citizen until his death. ==Selected publications==