Born in Kwangtung, China, in 1901, Professor Chan was educated at Lingnan University in Canton and Harvard University. He was the Anna D. R. Gillespie Professor of Philosophy at Chatham College and adjunct professor of Chinese thought at Columbia University. He has given over a thousand lectures on China throughout the United States and has taught at Dartmouth College and Lingnan university. His Source Book of Chinese Philosophy has been a classroom classic for many years. In addition to writing several books, he has contributed essays on Chinese philosophy and religion to some thirty-eight anthologies, was editor for the Chinese philosophy section of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and has contributed articles on this subject to the Encyclopedia Britannica. He also received the highest academic honor available to a Chinese scholar: election to the Academia Sinica. Chan passed away in 1994.