Philip Yampolsky

Philip Boas Yampolsky ( born October 20, 1920 in New York City; † July 28, 1996 at St. Luke's Hospital ibid. ) was an American translator of Japanese literature and Buddhism watchers with Zen as a research priority. Yampolsky was a grandson of anthropologists and ethnologists Franz Boas.

Yampolsky graduated from the Horace Mann School and Columbia College of Columbia University, where he graduated in 1942. In the same year he enrolled in the Navy, where he learned Japanese in order to be employed as a translator in the Pacific War can. As a Lieutenant Junior Grade, he participated among others in the Battle of Iwo Jima and received for his translation work the Bronze Star.

After the war Yampolsky able to study Buddhism in Kyoto thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, where he remained from 1954 to 1962. During this period he created the first translation work Zen Buddhist literature, including in cooperation with Gary Snyder, Burton Watson, Iriya Yoshitaka and Yanagida Seizan.

After his return to the United States in 1962, Yampolsky studied again at Columbia University, where he joined the staff of the East Asian Library, and in 1965 his Ph.D. made. He became chief librarian of the East Asian Library in 1968 and retained this post until 1981, when he was appointed full professor of Japanese. Although he retired in 1990, he continued to teach until 1994.

Works (selection)

• Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (1967 )
• The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings (1971 )
• Selected Writings of Nichiren (1990 )
• Letters of Nichiren (1996 )

Swell

• Ned Walsh: " Philip B. Yampolsky (1920-1996) ", in The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 55, No. 4 (Nov., 1996), p. 1116.
• " Philip B. Yampolsky, Buddhism Expert, 75 ", obituary in The New York Times of August 2, 1996.

• University teachers (Columbia University)
• Librarian
• Translator
• Buddhist literature
• Person of Zen Buddhism
• Buddhologist
• Author
• Americans
• Carriers of the Bronze Star
• Born in 1920
• Died in 1996
• Man