| | 1 | Name: | Dr. John W. Baldwin | | | Institution: | Johns Hopkins University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | February 8, 2015 | | | | | | |
John Baldwin was a leading American specialist on the history of medieval France. Like Charles Homer Haskins, he had worked on the institutional and intellectual history of the twelfth century. His early works on the "just price" and the schoolman Peter the Chanter opened new vistas of research on economic growth and the culture of power. His book on the government of Philip Augustus won major prizes in America and France. The recipient of major honors in France and the United States, Dr. Baldwin was a generous colleague, a venerated teacher, and a distinguished medievalist in the mode of C. H. Haskins and J. R. Strayer. He had been at Johns Hopkins University since 1986 as Charles Homer Haskins Professor of History and Professor of History Emeritus. He was awarded the Medieval Academy's Haskins Medal in 1990 and the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur, France in 2001. He was a member of the Medieval Academy of America (president, 1996-97); the British Academy; and l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2004. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Ronald G. Witt | | | Institution: | Duke University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1932 | | | Death Date: | March 15, 2017 | | | | | | |
Ronald Witt was a distinguished scholar of Renaissance humanism with an extensive publication record. His book In the Footsteps of the Ancients is considered the most important book on the medieval origins of Renaissance humanism in the past fifty years, and it has gained widespread international recognition as a ground-breaking contribution to the early history of the humanist movement in Italy. He is a recipient of the American Philosophical Society's Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History and of the American Historical Society's Marraro Prize, given for the best book in Italian studies. His election as vice president (with automatic succession to the office of president) of the Renaissance Society of America was further testimony to his leadership in the field of Renaissance studies. At the time of his death on March 15, 2017, at age 84, he was William B. Hamilton Professor of History Emeritus at Duke University, where he had taught since 1971, Dr. Witt received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1965). He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2004. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Ying-shih Yu | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2004 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1930 | | | Death Date: | August 1, 2021 | | | | | | |
An influential teacher and prolific author, Ying-shih Yu has long earned international recognition as the pre-eminent scholar of Chinese history. The breadth of his research, ranging from views of life and death in first and second-century China, through intellectual history and political culture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, to eighteenth through twentieth-century Chinese intellectual history, is staggering. In his work he combines close and subtle scrutiny of fresh source materials to broad generalization about main themes in Chinese history and culture. His research on a merchant ethos in Chinese society from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, for example, has been influential in articulating the belief in a Confucian work ethic in modern East Asian countries. In May 2001 a group of his former students gathered in Princeton for an unusually stimulating two-day conference on topics ranging over more than two thousand years of Chinese history. Born in China in 1930, Dr. Yu received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1962 and served as assistant professor there from 1969-77 before moving to Yale University as Charles Seymour Professor of History. In 1987 he joined the faculty of Princeton University as Professor of Chinese Studies and History and became Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies Emeritus in 2001. Dr. Yu's many written works include Views of Life and Death in Late Han China (1962); Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations (1967); Fang I-chih wan chieh k'ao (The Death of Fang I-chih), 1611-1671 (1972); "Intellectual Breakthroughs in the Tang-Sung Tradition"; "'O Soul, Come Back!' A Study in the Changing Conceptions of the Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China"; Intellectual History in Late Imperial China: Modern Interpretations (1984); Shih yu Chung-kuo wen-hua (History of Chinese Culture) (1987); and The Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century. With fellow APS member John Hope Franklin, Dr.Yu shared the 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity. He was elected a member of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan in 1974 and of the American Philosophical Society in 2004. He died on August 1, 2021 in Princeton, NJ. | |
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