Lin Mosei

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
Education	Tokyo Imperial University (BA) Columbia University (MA, PhD)
Occupation	Scholar

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.¹² He was also a calligrapher³ and a Christian.

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.

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.