It is with great sadness that the family announces the peaceful passing of John Tse in his ninety-sixth year.

John Yung Dong Tse was born in 1924 in Shanghai, China. He enjoyed sixty-six years of marriage with his wife, Emma.

Dr. Tse was an accomplished academic, businessman, historian, and philanthropist. He made lasting contributions to four different colleges at Purdue University and to the West Lafayette community. A man of many intellectual interests, he authored books on business finance, Chinese history, ancient astronomy, and poetry.

Dr. Tse became a business professor at the College of Engineering at Purdue University in 1957 and was a central figure in the founding of the Krannert School of Management in 1962. He taught at Purdue University for 31 years and became a Distinguished Krannert Professor, Emeritus, in 1988.

At Purdue, Dr. Tse was chairman of the Industrial Management policy committee and founding director of the Master of Science in the Industrial Administration program, the first eighteen-month MSIA program.

Close to home, Dr. Tse was the owner-developer of the West Lafayette Hilton Inn and Franklin Park Apartments. In China, he founded the China American Model Farm in Tieling City in Liaoning.

In 2006, he became co-founder and CEO of Bio Processing Technology Inc., which developed commercial uses for a novel green technology, invented by Professors Li-fu Chen and Qin Xu, to produce sugar and ethanol from corn.

Even after his retirement from Purdue University, Dr. Tse continued to leave his mark on the school through his leadership and philanthropy. He and his wife established the John and Emma Tse Global Scholars Fund in 2008. More than 200 students in the College of Health and Human Sciences were awarded scholarships from the Fund to study abroad in twenty countries. In 2009, Dr. Tse and his wife established the John and Emma Tse Gift Fund for Experimental Research on Cellulosic Ethanol in the Food Science Department of Purdue University’s College of Agriculture. They also founded the Purdue China Agricultural Program and the Purdue-Tsinghua Program of Chinese History and Society.

Dr. Tse received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1944 from St. John’s University in Shanghai. He came to the United States in 1949. In 1951, he received an MBA from Stanford University.
Six years later, he became the first Chinese student to receive a Doctorate of Commercial Science from Harvard Business School. He was a Ford Foundation visiting fellow at Princeton University in 1961 and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Commerce, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1966. He later served as a UN consultant at the Jiangsu Center for Sciences and Technology, Nanjing, China, and an honorary professor at Zhejiang University of Economics and Finance.

Dr. Tse was committed to his community, Purdue University, and its students. He chaired the Mayor’s Commission on Human Relations in West Lafayette from 1969 to 1970. He advised President Frederick Hovde during a turbulent period of college unrest in the 1960s. The Purdue Exponent also became independent from the University through his mentorship of student leaders. In 1969, the Exponent quoted him: “Our main job is to have people of different races, religions and national backgrounds continue to live harmoniously together in this community.”

Dr. Tse is survived by his wife, Emma; sons, Robert (Yumi) and Frank (Donna); and grandchildren, Allison (Jonathan), Michael, and Emma.

A funeral service has been planned for ten o’clock in the morning on Friday, October 18 at Soller-Baker Funeral Homes, 400 Twyckenham Boulevard in Lafayette. Full details and visitation hours will be made available at https://soller-baker.com/obituary. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Purdue Student Publishing Foundation or a charity of your choice.