Herrlee Glessner Creel (January 19, 1905 – June 1, 1994) was an American Sinologist and philosopher who specialized in Chinese philosophy and history, and was a professor of Chinese at the University of Chicago for nearly 40 years. On his retirement, Creel was praised by his colleagues as an innovative pioneer on early Chinese civilization and as one who could write both for specialists and for the interested general public with cogency, lucidity, and grace.

Herrlee G. Creel was born on January 19, 1905, in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate, graduating with a Ph.B. degree in 1926. He then continued on at Chicago as a graduate student studying Chinese philosophy, earning an A.M. in 1927, followed by a Ph.D. in 1929 with a dissertation entitled "Sinism: A Study of the Evolution of the Chinese World-view". He began his postdoctoral career as an assistant professor of psychology at Lombard College from 1929 to 1930. He was awarded fellowships by the American Council of Learned Societies (1930–1933), the Harvard-Yenching Institute (1931–1935) and the Rockefeller Foundation (1936, 1945 –1946). In 1936 he accepted a post at the University of Chicago, where he was an instructor in Chinese history and language until he was appointed Assistant Professor of early Chinese literature and institutions in 1937.

Creel was one of the founders of the university's Far Eastern studies program in the 1930s and had a major role in building its Far Eastern Library. He ordered some 5,000 books a year from dealers in China, then, in 1939, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation he returned to China, then in the grips of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the city of Beiping (Beijing) was occupied by the Japanese Army. He bought more than 75,000 volumes for the library, especially those dealing with the pre-modern period.

...
Wikipedia