R.I.P. Professor Edwin George Pulleyblank

Professor Edwin George Pulleyblank, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, passed away in Vancouver on Saturday, 13 April 2013 at 4:36 p.m. local time. His wife and his three children were there with him. Professor Pulleyblank was 90.

Professor Pulleyblank FRSC (August 7, 1922 - April 13, 2013) born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was a Sinologist and professor emeritus of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is known for his studies of the historical phonology of Chinese.

Pulleyblank was educated at the University of Alberta (BA, 1942) and the University of London (PhD in Chinese, 1951). He worked at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, 1948–53, as Chair of Chinese at the University of Cambridge, 1953–66, and professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, 1966–87.

Those of us in Chinese linguistics who were fortunate to have been one of his advisees (including Sun Jingtao, Derek Herforth, etc.), as well as many others in the field of sinology, remember him with fondness, recalling his warmth, his kindness, and his patience. He was ever so passionate in his scholarly research, and thoroughly dedicated to the field, be it Chinese linguistics or Chinese history. And then there was also the whimsical side of him, as in his recalling some humorous incidents from the past, for example, which brought out his smile and a quiet chuckle.

A "Dedication to Professor Edwin G. Pulleyblank" appears in the NACCL-20 Proceedings, online at:
http://naccl.osu.edu/sites/naccl.osu.edu/files/egp_dedication.pdf

Professor Pulleyblank's final publication also appears in the NACCL-20 Proceedings, "Language as Digital: A New Theory of the Origin and Nature of Human Speech":
http://naccl.osu.edu/sites/naccl.osu.edu/files/00_pulleyblank-eg.pdf

A list of his publications, spanning 1950 through 2008, is published in that proceedings:
http://naccl.osu.edu/sites/naccl.osu.edu/files/egp_pubn.pdf

More on details of his life is available at University of British Columbia, Department of Asian Studies .

Last Updated: 16^th April, 2013 9:32 post meridiem