Shěn Qīnpéi 沈欽裴
Style name Lǚxiān 侶仙. Native of Chángzhōu 長洲 (Sūzhōu). Active mid-Dào-guāng. Birth and death years not securely fixed; the local literature places him as a contemporary and student of 李潢 Lǐ Huáng (d. 1811) and a friend of 李銳 Lǐ Ruì (1768–1817), with his own work appearing through the 1820s and 1830s.
A mathematical scholar of the JiāDào generation. His own principal work is the Sìyuán yùjiàn xìcǎo 四元玉鑑細草 (KR3fc019) — a 2-juàn detailed exposition of 朱世傑 Zhū Shìjié’s KR3fc017 Sìyuán yùjiàn — composed as the recovery commentary that restored an intelligible reading of the long-lost Yuán-period sìyuán shù 四元術 (four-element / four-unknown algebraic method) to circulation. The work was completed in stages over the 1820s, occasioned by 羅士琳 Luó Shìlín’s parallel project on the Sìyuán yùjiàn; the two scholars collaborated and exchanged drafts. As editor (校訂) Shěn was also responsible for putting 李潢’s posthumous KR3fc002 Jiǔzhāng suànshù xìcǎo túshuō and KR3fc005 Jígǔ suànjīng kǎozhù through final editing for publication around 1820.
Shěn is the link figure between the Qián-lóng-era kǎozhèng recovery of the Suànjīng shíshū (driven by Dài Zhèn 戴震 and his immediate successors Lǐ Huáng and Lǐ Ruì) and the Dào-guāng-era recovery of the lost SòngYuán algebraic tradition (driven by Luó Shìlín and Shěn himself), whose Sìyuán yùjiàn expositions made Zhū Shìjié’s tiānyuányī / sìyuán algebra newly accessible to mid-Qīng Chinese mathematicians.