- Andrew Nelson
Andrew Nathaniel Nelson (
December 23 1893 -May 17 1975 ) was an Americanmissionary and scholar ofEast Asian languages andliterature , best-known for his work in Japaneselexicography .He was born in
Great Falls, Montana to Swedish immigrant parents and earned his B.A. fromWalla Walla University . In 1918, he began his long career of service in the Seventh-day Adventist missions ofEast Asia , where he gained particular distinction in the fields of general education and language training. TheUniversity of Washington awarded Nelson a Ph.D. in 1938 for his dissertation on "The origin, history, and present status of the temples of Japan".After retiring from missionary work in 1961, he was preoccupied with placing the finishing touches on his masterpiece, the "Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary", which first appeared in print the following year. The work, which was posthumously revised and expanded by a team lead by
John H. Haig at theUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa , was reissued in 1997 as "The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary". It is one of the most authoritative Kanji dictionaries for English learners of the language, and displays particular sensitivity to the difficulties they may have with the Kangxi radical system traditionally used to classifyKanji .Nelson died in
Hong Kong .ee also
*
Seventh-day Adventist Church External links
* [http://www.uni-trier.de/uni/fb2/j-studien/mail/2810.html Basic biographical details (in German)]
* [http://www.thejapanshop.net/books/nelson.htm Jacket and sample page from "The New Nelson"]
* [http://catalog.lib.washington.edu:2082/search/fThesis+38961/fthesis+38961/-2%2C-1%2C0%2CE/frameset&FF=fthesis+3896&1%2C2%2C University of Washington library catalog entry for Nelson's Ph.D. thesis]
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