David S. Nivison | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Nivison in 2012 | |||||||||
| Born | January 17, 1923 Farmingdale, Maine, U.S. | ||||||||
| Died | October 16, 2014 (aged 91) Los Altos, California, U.S. | ||||||||
| Alma mater | Harvard University (AB, PhD) | ||||||||
| Known for | Discovery of accurate Zhou dynasty founding date | ||||||||
| Spouse |
Cornelia Green
(m. 1944; died 2008) | ||||||||
| Scientific career | |||||||||
| Fields | Sinology | ||||||||
| Institutions | Stanford University (1948-88) | ||||||||
| Academic advisors | John King Fairbank James Robert Hightower William Hung Yang Lien-sheng | ||||||||
| Notable students | Philip J. Ivanhoe, Edward Shaughnessy, Kwong-loi Shun, Bryan W. Van Norden | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 倪德衛 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 倪德卫 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
David Shepherd Nivison (January 17, 1923 – October 16, 2014) was an American sinologist known for his publications on late imperial and ancient Chinese history, philology, and philosophy, and his 40 years as a professor at Stanford University.[1] Nivison is known for his use of archaeoastronomy to accurately determine the date of the founding of the Zhou dynasty as 1045 BC instead of the traditional date of 1122 BC.