FREDERICK W. MOTE 1922–2005

Abstract

Frederick W. Mote, professor emeritus of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, has died after a long illness in Denver, Colorado, at the age of 82. Regarded even among leading scholars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China as one of the twentieth century's preeminent students of traditional Chinese civilization, Professor Mote wrote, edited, and translated numerous books, scholarly articles, and essays on subjects that ranged from classical Chinese philosophy to military history, and from the study of great cities such as Suzhou and Nanjing to the ways in which poetry, painting, and other of the arts could be used to gain a fuller understanding of Chinese economic, social, and cultural history. Mote was one of a very small number of academic pioneers who were instrumental in transforming the study of China and East Asia in the United States from a neglected backwater at most colleges and universities to a mature field with high standards and a distinguished record of scholarly achievement. He effected this important change through his publications, his teaching at Princeton and the University of Washington, and his years of service to organizations such as the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China, of which he was a founding member, the Chinese Advisory Committee of the Modern Languages Association, the Inter-University Board for Chinese Language Studies in Taiwan, which he chaired from 1961 to 1964, the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies, which he chaired from 1974 to 1978, the Editorial Board of the journal Asia Major, the Smithsonian Council, and the Visiting Committee of the Freer Gallery of Art.