Jan Wisseman Christie (1947–2021)

Abstract

Jan Wisseman (later, Jan Wisseman Christie) was born 27 April 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who both came originally from Texas. Her father was to become a very eminent microbiologist, and her mother sacrificed a potential scientific career to bring up four children: Jan; Charlie, a pathologist; Mary, a librarian; and Bob, an expert in aquatic ecology. Jan could have successfully followed in her father’s footsteps in a scientific career, but instead chose to move into the precarious field of oriental languages and history. She specialised in Sanskrit, Hindi and Tibetan, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. She was awarded aWoodrowWilson Fellowship in 1969, and subsequently a Thouron Scholarship from 1969 to 1972. She moved to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London for her PhD work in 1969. She shifted her research focus from India and Tibet to Java and Indonesia. Her PhD dissertation, which was entitled ‘Patterns of trade in western Indonesia: 9th through 13th centuries AD’ laid the foundation for her long-term scholastic interest in the relationship in the Southeast Asian maritime region between trade, material culture and society in the world of Jan Wisseman Christie. Photo by Clive Christie (1990).