Taipei: Historian Hsu Cho-yun, a correspondence research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology, has died in the United States at 94, Taiwan’s top research institution confirmed in a statement Monday.

According to Focus Taiwan, Hsu’s death on Sunday (U.S. time) was also confirmed by the Tang Prize Foundation in Taipei, which had honored him as a laureate in Sinology in 2024. The foundation commended his approach to studying ancient Chinese history, noting his exploration of cultural and intellectual exchanges between China and the world.

Born in Xiamen on September 2, 1930, Hsu attended National Taiwan University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history. He obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1962. After returning to Taiwan, he taught at National Taiwan University and chaired the Department of History before moving to the United States. There, he embarked on a three-decade career at the University of Pittsburgh.

Hsu was elected as an Academia Sinica academician in 1980 and became a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh in 1999. The U.S. university acknowledged his extensive work on Chinese history and culture. Hsu advocated for network theory, which utilized transportation networks to analyze long-term social and economic trends. He also conducted comparative research on Chinese history and other ancient civilizations.

Hsu published several works, including “Ancient China in Transition: An Analysis of Social Mobility, 722-222 B.C,” “Han Agriculture: The Formation of Early Chinese Agrarian Economy, 206 B.C.-A.D. 220,” and “American Life: A Humanistic Perspective of a Chinese Historian.” Despite being born with limited mobility and losing the ability to use most of his fingers, Hsu continued his research with assistive technology and assistance.

Neither Academia Sinica nor the Tang Prize Foundation provided the cause of Hsu’s death in their statements.