Eugene Wen-chin Wu

Eugene Wen-chin Wu (Chinese: 吳文津; Eugene Wu; July 12, 1922, Sichuan, China – August 1, 2022, Menlo Park, California) was a Chinese-born American scholar, bibliographer, and librarian best known for being head of the Harvard-Yenching Library from 1965 to 1997. Wu was an English major at National Central University in wartime China, served as an interpreter between Chinese and American soldiers, and was sent to the United States to help train pilots for the Chinese air force. After earning a degree in Library Science from University of Washington, Seattle he developed the Chinese collection at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He worked toward a PhD there, but became head of the Harvard-Yenching Library, where he stayed until retirement in 1997. Wu was a key figure in organizing American Chinese and East Asian libraries.^[1]