Laurence Thompson

Laurence G. Thompson (1920 - July 10, 2005) was a World War II veteran, sinologist, classical violinist and professor emeritus of East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Southern California.

Biography Thompson was born in 1920 in the Shandong province of Republic of China, the son of missionaries Kenneth Kilgore Thompson and Denise Archer Thompson. His family had to leave China in 1927 during the unrest of the Northern Expedition, when they moved to Thailand, where he caught Malaria. They returned to China in 1929, and he lived there until age 14, when his father retired.

While in China, he was educated at the Chinan Foreign School and the Shanghai American School. His main intellectual commitment was to his pioneering studies of Chinese religion.

He wrote Chinese Religion: An Introduction. which went through 5 editions, and that Paper (2012) called "The best introductory study" of Chinese religion, and The Chinese Way in Religion.

His three-volume bibliographical work Chinese Religions: Publications in Western Languages (1970) is a basic resource to the field,

He authored the article on Chinese religion for Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th edition. Also, he served as president of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions for nine years, and in 1992 was honored with a festschrift in the Journal of Chinese Religions. In addition, Thompson translated several volumes of religious studies by Wu Yaoyu and documents on Taiwanese studies.