Back to today’s briefing

Story perspectives

Digital Pioneer Andy West Dies at 65, Transforms Non-Roman Scripts

10/9/2025

27 6

Summary

Story summary

Andy West died at 65 from a heart attack and led encoding of non-Roman scripts, including Tibetan.
He advanced digital representations of Tangut and Khitan.
Known as Wei An in Chinese and BabelStone online, he earned a Princeton PhD in classical Chinese literature in 1993, retired in 2018, and is survived by wife Wei-Wei and daughters Amber and April.

1 of 1

Story summary

Andy West died at 65 from a heart attack and led encoding of non-Roman scripts, including Tibetan.
He advanced digital representations of Tangut and Khitan.
Known as Wei An in Chinese and BabelStone online, he earned a Princeton PhD in classical Chinese literature in 1993, retired in 2018, and is survived by wife Wei-Wei and daughters Amber and April.