G. William Skinner, 1925–2008

Abstract

Part I: A Professional Appreciation George William Skinner^ the most important American anthropologist to study China in the 20th century and a towering figure worldwide in China studies and spatially oriented social science, died of cancer on 26 October 2008. With his boots on. Bill Skinner was born in Oakland, California in 1925, the son of a druggist and a music teacher, and attended Berkeley High School and Deep Springs College, a tiny, two-year, all-male institution in the California desert. He then entered the US Navy, where he was trained at the Navy Oriental Language School, continu ing an interest in Asia that had begun at least as early as Deep Springs. After the War he attended Cornell University, where he earned his BA in Asian studies in 1947 and his PhD in anthropology in 1954. He was field director of the Cornell Southeast Asia Project from 1951 to 1955, and research associate in East Asian Studies from 1956 to 1958. After a brief stint as assistant professor of sociology at Columbia from 1958 to 1960, he returned to Cornell as associate professor of anthropology from 1960 to 1965. He was professor of anthropology at Stanford University from 1965 to 1989, and at the University of California, Davis, from 1990 until his formal retirement at age 80 in 2005. He continued active research until shortly before his death. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1980, and was President of the Association for Asian Studies in 1983.