born October 5, 1959, Athens, Ohio, U.S.

American architect and sculptor who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The daughter of intellectuals who had fled China in 1948, Lin received her bachelor's degree in 1981 from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied architecture and sculpture. During her senior year she entered a nationwide competition sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to create a design for a monument honouring those who had served and died in that war. Lin's award-winning design consisted of a polished black granite V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of the approximately 58,000 men and women who were killed or missing in action. This minimal plan was in sharp contrast to the traditional format for a memorial, which usually included figurative, heroic sculpture. The design aroused a great deal of controversy, reflecting the lack of resolution of the national conflicts over the war, as well as the lack of consensus over what constituted an appropriate memorial at the end of the 20th century. Eventually, a compromise was reached with the commissioning of a traditional statue depicting three servicemen with a flag to stand at the entrance to the memorial. After Lin's monument was dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on Veterans Day in 1982, however, it became a popular and moving tourist attraction.