22 Facts About Jonathan Spence

Jonathan Dermot Spence was an English-born American historian, sinologist, and writer who specialized in Chinese history.

Jonathan Spence was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008.

Jonathan Spence frequently used biographies to examine cultural and political history.

Jonathan Spence was born on 11 August 1936 to Muriel and Dermot Jonathan Spence in Surrey in England.

Jonathan Spence's mother was a French researcher while his father worked at an art gallery and a publishing house.

Jonathan Spence was educated first at Winchester College, graduating in 1954.

Jonathan Spence then spent two years in the British Army and was deployed in Germany during this period.

Jonathan Spence received his BA in history in 1959, studying at Clare College, Cambridge.

Jonathan Spence went to Yale University on a Clare-Mellon Fellowship to study the history and culture of China, receiving an MA and then a PhD in 1965, when he won the John Addison Porter Prize.

Jonathan Spence taught a popular undergraduate course at Yale University on the history of modern China, which formed the basis for his book The Search for Modern China.

Jonathan Spence taught for more than 40 years at the university.

Jonathan Spence was president of the American Historical Association between 2004 and 2005.

Jonathan Spence's book The Search for Modern China was a New York Times best seller and documented the evolution of China starting from the decline of the Ming dynasty in the early 1600s to the pro-democracy movement of 1989, while his book Treason by the Book documented the story of a scholar who took on the third Manchu Emperor in the 1700s.

Jonathan Spence received eight honorary degrees in the United States as well as from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and from Oxford University.

Jonathan Spence was invited to become a visiting professor at Peking University and an honorary professor at Nanjing University.

Jonathan Spence was named Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 2001, and in 2006, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

Jonathan Spence received the William C DeVane Medal of the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa ; a Guggenheim Fellowship ; the Los Angeles Times History Prize, and the Vursel Prize of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Jonathan Spence was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, named a MacArthur Fellow, appointed to the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, and named a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.

In 2010, Jonathan Spence was appointed to deliver the annual Jefferson Lecture at the Library of Congress, the US federal government's highest honour for achievement in the humanities.

Jonathan Spence's wife Annping Chin was a senior lecturer in history at Yale with a PhD in Chinese thought from Columbia.

Jonathan Spence had two sons from a previous marriage to Helen Alexander, Colin and Ian Spence, two stepchildren, Yar Woo and Mei Chin, a grandchild as well as two step-grandchildren.

Jonathan Spence died from complications of Parkinson's disease on 25 December 2021, at the age of 85 at his residence in West Haven, Connecticut.