27 Facts About Lucian Pye

Lucian W Pye was an American political scientist, sinologist and comparative politics expert.

Lucian Pye was a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 35 years and served on several Asia-related research and policy organizations.

Lucian Pye wrote or edited books and served as advisor to Democratic presidential candidates, including John F Kennedy.

Lucian W Pye was born on October 21,1921, in Fenzhou, in Shanxi Province in northwest China.

Lucian Pye lost much of his grasp of the Chinese language upon moving to Ohio, only to take it up again later.

Lucian Pye graduated in 1943 from Carleton College, where he met Mary Toombs Waddill, of Greenville, South Carolina; they married in 1945, and she would co-write and help edit many of his books and writings over the years.

Lucian Pye returned to China at the end of World War II to become an intelligence officer with the US Marines Corps, achieving the rank of second lieutenant.

Lucian Pye wrote his dissertation on the attitudes underlying the warlord system of politics in China during the 1920s and earned his Ph.

Early in his career, Lucian Pye worked with other political scientists to free the field from academic constraints placed upon them by the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

In 1956, Lucian Pye joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies as a teacher in a new program, which eventually developed into a political science department, partially due to Lucian Pye's assistance.

Lucian Pye helped found the Committee on Comparatives Politics for the Social Science Research Council, along with other social scientists seeking alternative explanations for change than those offered by Marxism.

Lucian Pye became one of the pioneers in the 1950s and 1960s in developing theories about the political development and modernization of Third World nations.

Unlike most political scientists of his day who sought universal and overarching theories, Lucian Pye focused on specific cultures, countries and people in order to create more individualized interpretations.

Lucian Pye advised the Department of State and the National Security Council in China-related matters.

Lucian Pye served as an advisor to Democratic presidential candidates, Senators John F Kennedy and Henry M Jackson, and urged both men to pursue a muscular foreign policy.

Lucian Pye was an early proponent of the Vietnam War.

Lucian Pye served as a leader, and eventually acting chairman, with the National Committee on United States-China Relations, where he helped lay the groundwork for the American table tennis team visit to China in 1971.

Lucian Pye served on several private organizations in which scholars, government experts and intellectuals discussed Asia-related research and policy, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society and the Asia Foundation.

Lucian Pye was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962 and the American Philosophical Society in 1976.

Lucian Pye supported the Social Science Research Council in the establishment of the Universities Service Center, a scholarly center in Hong Kong.

Lucian Pye conducted research in Malaysia, which he used to suggest the appeal of communism in that nation came from insecurity over the pace of change.

Lucian Pye worked in Burma, where he concluded psychology was more important than economics in explaining development.

Lucian Pye was no proponent of Counter-insurgency methods like the Hamlet Program.

Critics of the book accused Pye of using flagrant stereotypes; Howard Wriggins, writing in Political Science Quarterly, asked, "Who but Lucian Pye would be bold enough" to undertake such a publication.

Lucian Pye went on to serve as president of the American Political Science Association from 1988 to 1989.

Lucian Pye died on September 5,2008, in Boston, Massachusetts, at age 86.

Lucian Pye was survived by his wife of 63 years, the former Mary Waddill; his daughters Lyndy Pye of Northampton, Massachusetts, and Virginia Pye of Richmond, Virginia; his son, Chris, of Northampton; and three grandchildren, Anna Swann-Pye, and Eva and Daniel Ravenal.