Ruan Yuan

Also known as Zi Boyuan · Hao Yuntai

Ruan Yuan, courtesy name Boyuan, styled Yuntai, came from Yizheng in Jiangsu and passed the metropolitan examination in 1789. After serving as education commissioner in Shandong and Zhejiang he became governor of Zhejiang under Jiaqing, founding the Gujing Jingshe academy in Hangzhou and sending forces against the sea raider Cai Qian. As governor of Jiangxi in 1816 he had the Thirteen Classics with their commentaries printed at Nanchang with his collation notes, and the next year, as governor-general at Canton, he founded the Xuehaitang academy and later published a vast collection of Qing classical scholarship, Huang Qing jingjie. From 1826 he governed Yunnan and Guizhou for nearly ten years, entered the Grand Secretariat in 1835 and later retired through age and illness. He died in 1849 at eighty-six by Chinese reckoning with the posthumous name Wenda; his Biographies of Mathematicians and Astronomers (Chouren zhuan) collects lives of calendar experts across the ages.