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Kennedy, George A. (George Alexander), 1901-1960

LC control no.nr 91037561
Descriptive conventionsrda
Personal name headingKennedy, George A. (George Alexander), 1901-1960
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Variant(s)Kennedy, George Alexander, 1901-1960
Birth date1901-05-17
Death date1960-08-15
Place of birthMoganshan (China)
Place of deathPacific Ocean.
AffiliationYale University
Profession or occupationSinologists
Found inHis Simple Chinese stories, 1943: t.p. (George A. Kennedy)
NUC pre-56 (Kennedy, George Alexander, 1901-1960)
Wikipedia, October 5, 2022 (George A. Kennedy (sinologist); George Alexander Kennedy (17 May 1901--15 August 1960) was an American sinologist known for his studies of classical Chinese and for his teaching of Chinese to students; he was born in Moganshan, Zhejiang Province, China, where his parents Alexander and Ada Kennedy were serving as Protestant missionaries; although his family spoke English at home, Kennedy grew up speaking the local Chinese dialect, a form of Wu Chinese, and often said that Chinese was his native language; the Kennedy family left China in 1918; from 1922 to 1925 he studied theology at the Western Theological Seminary and the Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York; he returned to China in 1926 and taught English and Chinese in Shanghai; in 1932, Kennedy went to the University of Berlin, where he studied Chinese and Mongolian; in 1937, Kennedy completed his Ph. D. with a dissertation on the role of confession in Chinese law; he had previously returned to the United States and worked in the Orientalia department of the Library of Congress under Arthur W. Hummel, Sr., writing 72 entries in Hummel's biographical dictionary, Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period; in 1936 he began teaching Chinese at Yale University; he was made an assistant professor in 1937, an associate professor in 1943, and full professor in 1954, the rank he held upon his sudden death in 1960; during World War II, Kennedy served as the director of the Army Specialized Training Program at Yale from 1942 to 1944; he died of a heart attack on a ship during a journey from Yokohama, Japan to San Francisco; Kennedy was the principal author of the Yale Romanization of Mandarin)