Biography — Bernard Solomon
by David Gedalecia (Fisher Professor of History, College of Wooster)
Professor Bernard Simon Solomon, who had a long and distinguished career in teaching, and inscholarship related especially to the Chinese School of Names mingjia, passed away December
2, 2022 in New York City at the age of 98.
He was born in Bronx, New York on June 10, 1924 and attended Morris High School, where he
was selected as “the student most likely to succeed.” After serving in the U.S. Army Cavalry
Corps during WW II, he enrolled in the Army Language Training Institute to study Chinese. He
received his B.S. in Mathematics from CCNY and M.A. and PH.D degrees in Far Eastern
Languages from Harvard. There, between 1952 and 1958, he was a Research Assistant on themonumental, but ill-fated, Harvard-Yenching Institute Chinese-English Dictionary project, under
the direction of the eminent Sinologist and Mongolist Francis W. Cleaves. In 1952, he and Dr.
Glen W. Baxter embarked on the weighty project of editing Achilles Fang’s annotated translationof The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms (220-265), chapters 69-78, taken from the ZizhiTongjian (The Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government) by the Song historian Sima Guang(1019-1086). In 1954, after pondering the entry in the Chinese dictionary Cihai on the number“one” in Chinese, Solomon published a challenging article entitled “One is No Number in China
and the West” in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. In 1955, Harvard published hisdissertation The Veritable Record of the T’ang Emperor Shun-tsung, which is arguably theearliest surviving example of the genre known as shilu (veritable record). Bernard Solomon had
many associations with scholarly luminaries at Harvard in the 1950s, namely Achilles Fang,Glen Baxter, Serge Elisseeff, James R. Hightower, William Hung, Yang Lien-sheng, Elling Eide,and Benjamin Schwartz.
Following his time at Harvard, he went on to teach Chinese language, literature and civilization
at SUNY-New Paltz in upstate New York (1959-1962) and at Queens College in New York City,
where he became Professor of Chinese (1962-1986). Between 1967 and 1978, he received NEHand ACLS grants to pursue research into the Chinese School of Names, specifically the thinkers
Hui Shih and Gongsun Long. Two articles were published in 1969 and 1981/1983 on this schoolin Monumenta Serica, and owing to the support of professors James R. Hightower and A.C.
Graham, he continued this research, resulting in the 2013 monograph On the School of Names inAncient China, published by Monumenta Serica. This study looked at the texts through theapproach of language games and how language was used qua language. During the 1980s hecontributed some of this research to the Columbia University Seminar on Traditional China,
directed by Professor William Theodore de Bary.
Professor Solomon’s excursions into the intricacies of language, along with his grounding in
Mathematics, resulted in some of the most challenging and skillful scholarly approaches totranslation and textual analysis in the field of Chinese studies. But it should also be noted that he
was a remarkably inspiring teacher who brought many students into the field of Chinese studies
who followed his path into teaching and scholarship. Never one to promote his own considerable
accomplishments, he was much beloved by students, colleagues and fellow scholars in the field,and by the support of his friends in the Vermeer Apartments in New York City.

Bibliography:
The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms by Sima Guang. Trans. Achilles Fang. Co-Editors Bernard
Solomon and Glen Baxter. Harvard University Press, 1952.
“One is No Number in China and the West.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 17 (June,1954), 253-260.
The Veritable Record of the Tang Emperor Shun-tsung (February 28, 805–August 31, 805).
Trans. Bernard S. Solomon. Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies, XIII (Harvard UniversityPress),1955“Meditation on Two Concepts of Reality: Biblical and Taoist.” TriQuarterly (NorthwesternUniversity. 8 (1967), 125-131.
“The Assumptions of Hui-tzu.” Monumenta Serica. 28 (1969), 1-40.
“Kung-sun Lung Tzu, IV and VI,” Monumenta Serica 35 (1981 &1983), 235-273.
On the School of Names in Ancient China. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series 64 (2013).