Jonathan D. Spence is Sterling Professor of History at Yale University.
He specializes in the history of China since the sixteenth century.
A native of England, he was born in 1936. He attended Winchester College
from 1949 to 1954, and after two years in the British Army, studied
at Clare College, Cambridge University, receiving his B.A. in History
in 1959. He received his M.A. in 1961 and Ph.D. in 1965 from Yale and
was later appointed to the faculty. He has received honorary degrees
from Knox College (1984), Wheeling College (1985), the University of
New Haven (1988), Gettysburg College (1995), and the Chinese University
of Hong Kong (1996). He is the author of numerous scholarly books and
articles and is the recipient of awards, including the William C. DeVane
Medal of the Yale Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa for outstanding teaching
and scholarship (1978); Guggenheim Fellowship (1979); Director of Seminars
for the National Endowment for the Humanities (1977 and 1979); Los Angeles
Times History Prize (1982); Vursel Prize of the American Academy and
Institute of Arts and Letters (1983); member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences (1985); MacArthur Fellowship (1988); member of
the Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress (1988); member of
the American Philosophical Society (1993); and Corresponding Fellow
of the British Academy (1997). He is currently on the Governing Board
of the Yale University Press.
