Taipei, Feb. 13 (CNA) Chinese American historian and Tang Prize (唐獎) laureate Yu Ying-shih (余英時) has decided to use his NT$10 million (US$319,124) research grant to set up a scholarship in Taiwan with the hope of encouraging young researchers in the field of humanities, according to the Tang Prize Foundation.
Tang Prize Foundation CEO Chern Jenn-chuan (陳振川) and Huang Chin-shing (黃進興), director of the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, signed an agreement Thursday to formally establish the scholarship.
The institute will be responsible for selecting the recipients of the scholarship.
The scholarship will be awarded annually to six scholars in Taiwan under the age of 45 who are working on books or doctoral dissertations, according to the Tang Prize Foundation.
They will be selected by the institute and each year, three scholars will receive NT$360,000 each to assist in their work of writing a book. Three others will each be granted NT$240,000 to help with their doctoral theses.
Young scholars need financial assistance mostly in the final stages of writing their doctoral dissertations or books, Huang said.
Yu is hoping that the scholarship will encourage more young people to study the humanities, Huang said.
Yu was awarded the inaugural Tang Prize in Sinology last year. He is one of the five recipients of the first Tang Prize, which covers four categories -- sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Sinology and rule of law.
The biennial award comes with a cash prize of NT$40 million and a research grant of up to NT$10 million to be used within five years. The laureates can decide how they wish to use the NT$10 million grant, once it is in the field of research, according to the foundation.
The award was established by Taiwanese entrepreneur Samuel Yin in 2012 to complement the Nobel Prize.
(By Christie Chen)
