Background
He was born in Durango, Colorado on August 20, 1927 as Ellwyn Turrell Wylie.
He was born in Durango, Colorado on August 20, 1927 as Ellwyn Turrell Wylie.
He attended the University of Washington as an undergraduate student, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Wylie then continued on at Washington as a graduate student, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese in 1958 with a dissertation entitled "The Geography of Tibet According to the "Dzam-gling-rgyas-bshad".
He was for many years professor of Tibetan at the University of Washington and its first chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Literature. Wylie founded the Tibetan Studies program at the University of Washington, the first such program in the United States. His romanization system for rendering the Tibetan language, known as Wylie transliteration, is the main system used for transcribing Tibetan in academic and historical contexts.
Amongst students of Tibetan, Wylie is best known for the system of Tibetan transliteration described in his article A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription (1959).
This has subsequently become the almost universally adopted scheme for accurately representing the orthography of Tibetan in the Latin script, and is commonly known as Wylie transliteration. Wylie died of cancer on August 25, 1984.
Upon his death, the 14th Dalai Lama remarked, "Doctor Wylie"s strong and genuine feelings for the Tibetan people and their just cause will long remain deeply appreciated. In the death of Doctor Wylie we have lost a true friend and a distinguished scholar of Tibetan studies.".