Michael Loewe

Michael Loewe (Chinese: 魯惟一; pinyin: Lǔ Wéiyī; born 1922), also known as M. A. N. Loewe, is a British academic and renowned sinologist who has authored dozens of books, articles, and other publications in the fields of Classical Chinese and ancient Chinese history.

Loewe attended The Perse School in Cambridge and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1942, he left Oxford to serve as a specialist officer in the British Government Communications’ Headquarters working with Japanese issues, while studying Classical Chinese in his spare time. The School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London awarded him a first class honours degree in 1951, and in 1956 he left the government to serve as a Lecturer in the History of the Far East at the University of London. Oxford awarded him a PhD in 1963, and he subsequently joined the faculty of the University of Cambridge, where he taught until retiring in 1990 to focus solely on research and scholarship. He is a fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge.

Honours

• Royal Asiatic Society, member.
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, honorary member.

A unique award in Loewe's honour exists at Cambridge: the "Michael Loewe Prize" may be awarded annually to one or more undergraduate candidates who have achieved distinction in literary Chinese.^[1]

Selected Works

• Imperial China: the Historical background to the Modern Age. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966.
• Records of Han Administration; volume I: Historical Assessment; volume II: Documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
• Everyday Life in Early Imperial China during the Han Period. London: B.T. Batsford, 1968.
• Crisis and Conflict in Han China. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974.
• Ancient Cosmologies. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975.
• Ways to Paradise: the Chinese Quest for Immortality. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979.
• Divination and Oracles. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981.
• Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith, Myth and Reason in the Han Period. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982.
• (as co-editor) The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• The Pride that was China. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1990.
• Early Chinese Texts: a Bibliographical Guide. Berkeley: the Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1993.
• Divination, Mythology and Monarchy in Han China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
• (as co-editor) The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Han and Xin Dynasties. Leiden: E.J.Brill, 2000.
• The Men who Governed China in Han Times. Leiden: E.J.Brill, 2004.

Notes

References

External links

• Michael Loewe Scholarship Fund, Cambridge University.