Henry Courtenay Fenn (February 26, 1894 – July 22, 1978) was an American sinologist and architect of Yale University's Chinese language program.
Early life
Henry Courtenay Fenn was born on February 26, 1894, in Peking (later Beijing), China, to Alice Holstein (née May) and Courtenay Hughes Fenn. His father was a missionary to China and compiler of The Five Thousand Dictionary. He grew up in Peking.
Career
Fenn was active in the "Yale system" of Chinese grammar developed by himself, George Kennedy, Gardner Tewksbury, Wang Fangyu and others working in the Institute of Far Eastern Languages (IFEL) at Yale in the late 1940s. During World War II, he conducted a Chinese program at Yale for the military. He was director of the IFEL from 1952 to 1962. He then became director emeritus.
After his mandatory retirement from Yale, he set up a Chinese language department at Dartmouth College. Starting in 1966, he spent three years at Washington University in St. Louis. At Washington University, he was the acting chairman of the department of Chinese and Japanese from 1966 to 1967. He retired in 1968.