Hugh M. Stimson
Hugh McBirney Stimson (December 5, 1931 – January 24, 2011) was an American sinologist and linguist who specialised in the poetry of the Tang dynasty (618–907). He was particularly known for his research into Chinese historical phonology which enabled him to reconstruct the spoken language of Tang poetry. Biography Stimson was born in Port Chester, New York in 1931. He studied for his undergraduate degree at Yale University, where he was a prestigious "scholar of the house" in his final year. After graduating in 1953 he stayed on at Yale to study towards a PhD, spending a year at the National Taiwan University during 1954–1955. His dissertation, completed in 1959, was a study of the Old Mandarin phonological system documented in the Zhongyuan Yinyun. After spending a year as assistant director of the Foreign Service Institute in Taiwan (1959–1960), he took up a position at Yale University, in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the Department Linguistics. He remained at Yale for his entire academic career, retiring in 2006 after forty-six years teaching at the university. During his time at Yale University he served several times as chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures