Mei Yiqi (Chinese: 梅貽琦; 29 December 1889 – 19 May 1962), courtesy name Yuehan (Chinese: 月涵), was a Chinese educator, physicist, and politician. He is best known as the longest-serving president of National Tsinghua University (1931–1948) and later served as the first president of National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan (1956–1962). He also served two terms as Minister of Education of the Republic of China (1948–1949 and 1958–1961).
Early Life and Education
Mei Yiqi was born in Tianjin, Qing China, on 29 December 1889, to a merchant family. His father, Mei Bochen, was a small merchant. His ancestral home was in Wujin District, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. In 1904, at age 15, he attended Nankai School, becoming a student of the renowned educator Zhang Boling. In August 1909, he was selected as one of the first group of Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program students sent to the United States. He attended Lawrence Academy in Groton, Massachusetts, and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Career
After returning to China in 1914, Mei worked briefly at the YMCA in Tianjin before becoming an instructor in physics and mathematics at National Tsinghua University. He was elected president of the university in 1931. Under his leadership, Tsinghua recruited and retained a distinguished faculty; by 1946, nearly half of the faculty held PhD degrees, and over 90% had studied abroad, including graduates from Harvard, MIT, Cornell, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), Mei was appointed chief administrator of the National Southwestern Associated University (Lianda) in Kunming, a wartime merger of Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University. He oversaw the rebuilding and reopening of the Tsinghua campus in Beijing on 10 October 1946, and served as president until December 1948.
In December 1948, as the Chinese Civil War intensified, Mei left Beijing. After a brief term as Minister of Education, he spent six years in the United States working with the China Foundation, which managed the Boxer Indemnity fund supporting Chinese students abroad. In 1955, he became the first president of National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He was appointed Minister of Education of Taiwan in 1958 and was elected an academician of Academia Sinica in February 1962.
Death
Mei Yiqi died of cancer at National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei on 19 May 1962, at the age of 72.
Legacy
At his inauguration as Tsinghua University's president on 3 December 1931, Mei delivered a famous statement: "A university is not defined by its grand buildings, but by its great masters." He is widely remembered as the "Eternal President" of Tsinghua University. His tomb, located on the campus of National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, is known as the "Garden of Mei" (梅園).
