Wu Dingliang (; January 1893 – 24 March 1969), also known as Woo Ting-Liang, was a pioneering Chinese anthropologist and educator. He is considered the founder of Chinese physical anthropology.

Biography

Wu was educated in Britain during the 1920s and came back to China after he obtained a

doctor's degree A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' l ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

. He continued his work in Academia Sinica as the director and researcher of the Group of Anthropology in the Institute of History and Language. His research concentrated on somatometry, description of biological variation of ethnic minorities in China. He collected morphological measurements and described physical characteristics of living people in different parts of China. He also prepared the foundation of Institute of Physical Anthropology. He published more than 10 papers on physical anthropology, for example, in 1942, he published "the Physical Characteristics of Miao in South China" in "Journal of Anthropology" edited by Britain Royal Society. Moreover, Wu Dingliang set up and edited "Renleixue Jikan"(Communication on Anthropology). In 1941, Wu published the paper " Somatometry of Chinese in the Plain of North China" (including 190 indexes of somatometry) in Vol.2 of "Communication on Anthropology". In Sept.of 1947, the Department of Anthropology and the Institute of Anthropology were set up at

Zhejiang University Zhejiang University, abbreviated as ZJU or Zheda and formerly romanized as Chekiang University, is a national public research university based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is a member of the prestigious C9 League and is selected into the n ...

, Wu Dingliang assumed the dean of the department and the chief of the institute. Wu Dingliang educated many students that became prominent scholars of physical anthropology. Among them are Zhang Yinyun and Han Kangxin. In the period from 1946 to 1948, he also worked as part-time professor in the department of anthropology at Jinan University in Shanghai. In 1948,Wu Dingliang was elected as academician of Academia Sinica. During the 1950s, Wu and Liu Xian invited Dong Tichen and Zhao Yiqing to

Fudan University Fudan University () is a national public research university in Shanghai, China. Fudan is a member of the C9 League, Project 985, Project 211, and the Double First Class University identified by the Ministry of Education of China. It is als ...

. They created the first teaching and research unit of physical anthropology in China. Wu was prosecuted during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...

, and he committed suicide in 1969.

References

T. L. Woo and G. M. Morant, 1932, A Preliminary Classification of Asiatic Races Based on Cranial Measurements onograph Academia Sinica Monograph of the National Research Institute of Social Sciences, No.7 Communication on Anthropology https://web.archive.org/web/20100507105727/http://comonca.org.cn/

Biography

References

See also