Friedrich Hirth (1845-1927) was a German-American Sinologist. Educated at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin and Greifswald he was a member of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service before taking up the post of Professor of Chinese at Columbia University.Victor Mair is Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is founder and editor of Sino-Platonic Papers and his books include The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (2000).