John Fryer
傅蘭雅
(1839–1928)
Late Qing Translator for Scientific Education
晚淸漢學翻譯科學敎育家
Born in Kent, John Fryer was a translator and sinologist. He was a headmaster of St. Paul’s from 1861 to 1863, taught at the Tongwen Guan (1863–65), and translated for the Kiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai (1868–96). A pivotal figure in China’s modern intellectual history, Fryer dedicated his life to bringing Western sciences to China.
A sinophile since his youth, Fryer was invited by Bishop George Smith to teach abroad while in Britain. He became St. Paul’s headmaster at the age of twenty-two and was by all accounts amicable and more than capable. Students during this time included Wu Ting Fang and Chan Ayin. Outside of teaching, Fryer learnt Cantonese and grew to master the Chinese language. Smith praised his ebullience, judgment, and raw talent.
In Shanghai, Fryer became a well-respected scientific translator. He translated more than 100 books over the course of thirty years, and his work influenced late Qing thinkers like Liang Qichao and Tan Sitong. Some of his terminologies remain in use, such as the Chinese names of chemical elements.
Fryer founded the Shanghai Polytechnic in 1876, China’s first science institution. In the same year, he started the first science journal in China, Gezhi Huibian (‘the Chinese Scientific Magazine’). Nine years later, he opened the Scientific Bookstore, where Liang and Tan were regulars.
From 1896 to 1913, Fryer was the first professor of Oriental Languages at the University of California, Berkeley. Though abroad, Fryer remained committed to furthering Chinese educational progress by funding schools for the blind and deaf. One of Fryer’s paragraphs in the last issue of Gezhi Huibian sums up what drove him, as translated from the Chinese:
If this collection proves to benefit China, then the long nights spent pouring one’s heart out would not have been in vain. One can only hope that China will continue to advance Western sciences for the sake of her own strength and enrichment, in order to become a brilliant light that will shine for a hundred generations.