John Lossing Buck

Biography Youth and education Buck was born in Dutchess County, New York. He graduated from Cornell University in 1914, and returned for an M.S. in 1925, and a PhD in 1933. Over the next twelve years he organized his students to conduct a survey of 16,786 farms and 38,256 farm families, which he analyzed in Chinese Farm Economy (University of Chicago Press, 1930), the first footnote of which cited his wife's novel The Good Earth. Buck continued the surveys, further producing a three volume study, Land Utilization in China (University of Chicago Press, 1937), one of the earliest and most extensive analyses of China's rural economy in the Republican period.

Later life and career In 1932, The Good Earth won a Pulitzer Prize. On June 11, 1935, Pearl Buck divorced him in Reno, Nevada. In 1941, he married Lomay Chang (1908–2012) in Chengdu, China. They had two children, Rosalind, born in China, and Paul, born in the United States.

In the following years Buck served in a series of significant posts, including U.S. Treasury Representative in China, Chief of the Land and Water Use Branch of FAO (United Nations) and Director for Agricultural Economics at the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs. After retiring in 1957, he continued giving lectures and writing, and served as a consultant for the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Among his published works from this period included Food and Agriculture in Communist China (Praeger, 1966) which he prepared for the Hoover Institution and co-authored with Owen L. Dawson and Yuan-Li Wu.