Chen Yuan

Chen Yuan was a Chinese historian and educator who was known as one of the "Four Greatest Historians" of Modern China, along with Lü Simian, Chen Yinke and Ch'ien Mu. He was born in Xinhui, Guangdong, in 1880 and studied the Confucian classics in his youth. He failed to pass the civil service exams and became interested in Christianity, which he converted to in 1919. He taught at Peking University, Beijing Normal University and Fu Jen Catholic University, and served as the president of the latter two institutions. He also served as the president of Metropolitan Library and the Palace Museum library before 1949. He was a member of the Academia Sinica and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He died in Beijing in 1971 at the age of 90. Chen Yuan's main academic contributions were in the fields of religious history, Yuan Dynasty history, textology and textual criticism. He was one of the pioneers of the study of Christianity in China, and published his influential book Research of Arkaguns in Yuan Dynasty in 1920, which explored the history of the Nestorian Christians in China. He also wrote extensively on the spread of Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism and Islam in China, as well as Buddhism, especially in the Qing Dynasty. He paid great attention to the collation and annotation of historical texts, such as the Code of Yuan Dynasty, the Ming History and the Qing History. He also wrote biographies of historical figures, such as Kublai Khan, Zheng He and Matteo Ricci. He was widely respected by his peers and students for his erudition and rigor.