Lin Mosei

In this article, the surname is Lin (林).

Lin Mosei (Chinese: 林茂生; pinyin: Lín Màoshēng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Lîm Bō͘-seng; Katakana: リン モセイ; born 30 October 1887, disappeared 11 March 1947) was a Taiwanese academic and educator. He was the first Taiwanese person to receive a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in the United States.^[1][2] He was also a calligrapher^[3] and a Christian.

Lin Mosei
林茂生
Born	30 October 1887 Donggang, Pingtung, Tainan Prefecture (Qing dynasty)
Died	11 March 1947(1947-03-11) (aged 59) (Reportedly) Taipei
Nationality	Taiwanese
Education	Tokyo Imperial University (BA) Columbia University (MA, PhD)
Occupation	Scholar

A replica of Lin Mosei's Columbia University PhD (doctoral) thesis displayed in the NCKU Museum.

Lin disappeared within days of the February 28 Incident in Taiwan in 1947; he is generally believed to have been killed as a part of Chinese Nationalist Party's crackdown after the island-wide civilian uprising.

Lin's second son, Lin Tsung-yi, was an academic and educator in psychiatry.

Life and career

Mosei was born on October 30, 1887, in Tainan Prefecture (now Tainan), Qing Taiwan, to a Presbyterian minister. In 1916, he earned a B.A. in philosophy from Tokyo Imperial University, becoming the first Taiwanese graduate of the institution.^[4] In 1928, he received an M.A. in literature from Columbia University in New York, where he studied under prominent scholars John Dewey and Paul Monroe.^[5] The following year, in 1929, he obtained his Ph.D. in education from Columbia. His doctoral dissertation, Public Education in Formosa Under the Japanese Administration: A Historical and Analytical Study of the Development and the Cultural Problems, was written in English and was not translated into Chinese until 2000.^[6] In 1945, he became the dean of arts at the National Taiwan University in Taipei. He disappeared on March 11, 1947, shortly after the February 28 incident.