One of the great things about this job is that I continue to find hidden connections to Taiwan around campus. For instance, there are not one but two different lecture series that honor former leaders of Taiwan's Central Bank: Stanford Library's Hsieh Memorial Lecture and the Stanford Center for International Development's Kuo Shu-liang Memorial Address. The Hoover Archives has an impressive collection of Taiwan-related materials that goes far beyond the Chiang Kai-shek diaries that everyone comes to look at. And just down the road, Stanford University Press regularly publishes good scholarship on Taiwan that places it in a comparative context. 

So it was bittersweet to read this week of the passing of Arthur P. Wolf, a professor of anthropology at Stanford. I learned from his obituary that he conducted fieldwork for many years in Taiwan--much of it focused on patterns of marriage, incest, and adoption--and that he built a unique archive of demographic data about the island's population in the early 20th century. I'm sorry I didn't know about his research or have a chance to meet him--I will have to go read his work now!

Wolf was the spouse of Hill Gates, herself a very prominent Stanford anthropologist and author of a landmark book on Taiwanese society, The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society.