Schuyler Van Rensselaer Cammann was born in New York city in 1912 and attended St. Paul's School (Long Island) and Kent School (Connecticut). He received his B.A. from Yale (1935), M.A from Harvard (1941), and Ph.D. (1949) from John Hopkins, where he studied under Owen Lattimore. Both the M.A. and Ph.D. were in Asian History. From 1935 to 1941 he taught English in the Yale-in-China program, and served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II stationed in Washington D. C., western China and Mongolia. In 1948 Cammann joined the faculty of the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania where he remained until his retirement in 1982. From 1948 till 1955 he was Associate Curator of the East Asian Collections for the University Museum. During his tenure at the museum he was a member of excavation teams at Gordion (Turkey) and Kunduz (Afghanistan). Also during that time he was a member of the panel for the popular T.V. program "What in the World" (1951 – 55). Important professional organization positions included Vice-President of the American Oriental Society and editor of its journal; President of the Philadelphia Anthropological Society and Philadelphia Oriental Club; fellow of the American Learned Societies and the American Anthropological Association.
Professor Cammann wrote, lectured, taught, and consulted in several geographic areas (including China, Tibet, Mongolia, Japan) on such topics as textiles, carpets, art, ivory, snuff bottles, magic squares, and symbolism. He authored four books and numerous articles and reviews, and presented considerable number of lectures to various meetings, organizations and conferences. After his retirement he continued to write as well as conduct several tours in Asia.
Schuyler Van Rensselaer Cammann died in an auto accident near his summer home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire on September 10, 1991.
From the guide to the Schuyler V. R. Cammann papers, 1946-1991, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)
