Gong Hwang-cherng

Who is Gong Hwang-cherng?

Gong Hwang-cherng was a Taiwan Chinese linguist who specialized in Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics and the phonetic reconstruction of Tangut and Old Chinese. He was born 10 December 1934 at Yunlin County in Taiwan, and graduated from National Taiwan Normal University in 1958 with a degree in English. He earned his PhD in 1975 from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany, and was a research fellow and later professor at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He was elected an honorary member of the Linguistic Society of America in 2001, and an academician of Academia Sinica in 2002. In 2006, he received a life achievement award from the Linguistic Society of Taiwan.