Chinese scholar who translated into Chinese works by T.H. Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Adam Smith, and others in an attempt to show that the secret to Western wealth and power did not lie in Western technological advances, such as gunmaking, but in the ideas and institutions that lay behind these techniques. His translations of and introductions to these works had great influence on Chinese intellectuals at the time and later.

Yan Fu was sent to England to study naval techniques, but he soon became interested in British government, jurisprudence, economics, and sociology. He returned to China in 1879. China's humiliating defeat by Japan in 1895 prompted him to advocate liberal social and political reform. He did so because he detected in liberal institutions a way of strengthening the state. His understanding of Darwinism convinced him that change must come through a gradual shift in the thought of the Chinese elite, not from revolution. In the chaotic years after the Chinese Revolution of 1911, he opposed republicanism in China and supported Yuan Shikai in his attempt to restore the monarchy. In his late years, Yan Fu rejected his earlier position regarding Western thought and turned increasingly to Confucianism and ancient Chinese culture.

Yan Fu wrote poetry in addition to his translations; two collections of his poetry were published posthumously.