Hu Shi 1891 – 1962

Hu Shi was a Chinese philosopher, essayist, and diplomat, and a leader of the May Fourth and New Culture movements. After completing his doctorate under John Dewey at Columbia, he returned to China to advocate for the use of vernacular Chinese in literature and scholarship and to apply pragmatist methods of inquiry to Chinese intellectual traditions. He produced an influential outline of the history of Chinese philosophy, served briefly as Chinese ambassador to the United States, and ended his career as president of Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He was perhaps the most public Chinese intellectual of his generation.