Zhou Youguang, Chinese linguist, sinologist, and academic (d. 2017)
Zhou Youguang (13 January 1906 – 14 January 2017), also known as Chou Yu-kuang or Chou Yao-ping, was a Chinese economist, banker, linguist, sinologist, Esperanto-speaker, publisher, and supercentenarian, known as the "father of Pinyin", a system for the writing of Mandarin Chinese in Roman script, or romanization, which was officially adopted by the government of the People's Republic of China in 1958, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982, and the United Nations in 1986.