David Shepherd Nivison

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David S. Nivison
David S. Nivison[note 1]
Born(1923-01-17)January 17, 1923
DiedOctober 16, 2014(2014-10-16) (aged 91)
Los Altos, California, United States
Alma materHarvard University (AB, PhD)
Known forDiscovery of accurate Zhou dynasty founding date
Spouse
Cornelia Green
(m. 1944; died 2008)
Scientific career
Fields
Edward Shaughnessy, Kwong-loi Shun, Bryan W. Van Norden
Chinese name
Hanyu Pinyin
Ní Déwèi
Wade–GilesNi2 Te2-wei4

David Shepherd Nivison (January 17, 1923 – October 16, 2014) was an American sinologist known for his publications on late imperial and ancient Chinese history, philology, and philosophy, and his 40 years as a professor at Stanford University.[1] Nivison is known for his use of archaeoastronomy to accurately determine the date of the founding of the Zhou dynasty as 1045 BC instead of the traditional date of 1122 BC.

Life and career

David Shepherd Nivison was born on January 17, 1923, outside of Farmingdale, Maine. His great-uncle, Edwin Arlington Robinson, was a notable 19th-century American poet and a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.[2]

Nivison entered

John K. Fairbank, and his first Chinese teachers were Yang Lien-sheng and William Hung, who passed on their deep knowledge of traditional Chinese scholarship and interest in recent Western historiography.[3]

Nivison began teaching at

Oxford University in 1973. Nivison retired from Stanford in 1988 and was designated professor emeritus.[1]

His doctoral dissertation on Zhang Xuecheng, the neglected

Zhou Dynasty, based on archaeoastronomy. The traditional date was 1122 BC, but Nivison initially argued that the likely date was 1045 BC, and then eventually suggested that it was 1040 BC. As well as disagreeing with the 1045/6 BC date for the Zhou conquest of Shang, Nivison has also strongly disagreed with most of the dates published by the Chinese government's Xia-Shang-Zhou chronology project
.

Nivison died at his home in Los Altos, California, on October 16, 2014, at age 91.[1]

Major works

Notes

  1. ^ Photo courtesy of George Zhijian Qiao

References

Citations

Sources