Hu Shih

胡适

1891–1962 ○ Heart attack

The liberal of the New Culture Movement who led the vernacular-language campaign and later served the Nationalists as a diplomat

A philosopher trained under John Dewey in the United States, he proposed literary reform in New Youth in 1917 and launched the vernacular-language movement. In the May Fourth years he urged “more study of problems, less talk of isms”, parting ways with Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu as they turned to Marxism. He was a professor and later president of Peking University and served as ambassador to the United States during the war with Japan. After 1949 he worked in the United States and Taiwan, while the mainland mounted a mass campaign against his thought in the 1950s. He died of a heart attack in Taipei.