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Donald F. Lach was a professor of history at the University of Chicago and arguably the foremost authority on Asia's influence on the history and development of Modern Europe (circa 1500-1800). He was born in Pittsburgh in 1917 to German immigrants. He received his bachelor's degree from West Virginia University in 1937 and his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1941. His thesis was titled "Contributions of China to German Civilization, 1648-1740," and portions of it were published in 1944 under the same title. In 1939 Lach married Alma Elizabeth Satorius, who was to become a successful chef and cookbook author. They had one daughter, Sandra Lach Arlinghaus, born in 1943. After completing the PhD, Lach taught at Elmira College and then returned to the University of Chicago in 1948.

Lach received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in France in1949-1950 and a Social Science Research grant to do more work in Europe from 1952 to 1953. During the early 1950s, two books were published of which Lach was co-author: Modern Far Eastern International Relations, with University of Chicago professor Harley Farnsworth MacNair (published in 1950), and Europe and the Modern World with Louis Gottschalk, also at the University of Chicago. Europe and the Modern World was published in two volumes: The Rise of Modern Europe (1951) and The Transformation of Modern Europe (1954). In 1957, Lach published a translation (with commentary) of the preface to Leibniz' Novissima Sinica.

From 1955 to 1966, Lach taught at the National Chegchih University in Taiwan and National Taiwan University and then at the University of Delhi in India from 1967 to 1968. In 1965 Asia on the Eve of Europe's Expansion, a volume of essays co-edited by Lach and a student of his, Carol Flaumenhaft, was published. That year also saw the publication of the first volume of his magnum opus Asia in the Making of Europe. Subtitled "A Century of Discovery," it was published as two books and dealt with contact and interactions between Asia and Europe during the 16th Century. In 1968, several excerpts from this volume were published individually: China in the Eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century, India in the eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century, Japan in the Eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century, and Southeast Asia in the Eyes of Europe: The Sixteenth Century.

In 1969 Lach was named Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in History at the University of Chicago. The following year, the first book of the second volume of Asia in the making of Europe came out. Books two and three followed in 1977. Bearing the subtitle "A Century of Advance," this volume explores the influence of 16th-century contact on various aspects of European culture and learning.

A secondary interest of Lach's was the political situation in East Asia in the mid-20th century. In 1975, after a drawn-out publication process, Lach and Edmund S. Wehrle's International politics in East Asia since World War II was released.

Lach retired from teaching in 1988, but continued researching and writing Volume 3 of Asia in the Making of Europe, subtitled "A Century of Advance." This volume was co-authored by Edwin van Kley, a former student of Lach's, and was published in four books in 1993. The third volume treats the relationship between Europe and Asia in the 17th century.

Asia in the Making of Europe is one of the first histories of Europe to give thorough consideration to outside influences on European culture. Lach's treatment of the influence of Asia on Europe in the Modern period considers the effects of discovery and exchange on botany, geography, ethnography, philosophy, history, medicine, and zoology. He studied not only European manuscripts and books, but also art and artifacts and primary Asian sources. Lach was a competent reader not only of French, German, Spanish, and Dutch, but also of Chinese and several other Asian languages. According to his Chicago Tribune obituary, Lach's longhand manuscripts were written with Mongol brand No. 2 pencils, and he had no interest in typewriters or computers (he worked with the assistance of a typist).

A festschrift, Asia and the West: encounters and exchanges from the age of explorations : essays in honor of Donald F. Lach was published in 1986, edited by Cyriac K. Pullapilly and Edwin J. Van Kley. Lach died on October 26, 2000 of stroke and pneumonia, and in 2001 his colleagues, friends, former students, and family established The Donald F. Lach Memorial Book Fund at the University of Chicago Library.