Though best known for his translation of sections of Ban Gu's Book of Han, he published on a wide range of topics in ancient Chinese history, astronomy and philosophy.
He taught at University of Minnesota and Marshall College before undertaking the Han shu translation project at the behest of the American Council of Learned Societies.
In the mid-1930s he was commissioned by the American Council of Learned Societies to undertake the work for which he would become best known, a translation of Ban Gu's Han shu.
[3] This work purported to show that a Roman legion that had been part of the army of Marcus Licinius Crassus defeated at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C.
Defeated again, they were settled at a place called Liqian located in modern Yongchang County, Jinchang, Gansu province.
[4] Following publication of the first volume of History of the Former Han Dynasty, Dubs taught at Duke University and its Divinity School, Columbia and the Hartford Seminary.
He also worked on the Chinese History Project of the Institute of Pacific Relations with Karl August Wittfogel at Columbia University.
Finally, in 1947 he was invited to join the faculty at Oxford University, where he took up the chair of Chinese that had been occupied by eminent pioneer Sinologists James Legge and William Edward Soothill.
He was once described as a "Spinozan saint who had missed some of the bigger academic plums because he wouldn't press his pants" and offended some of the Oxford dons by parking his motorcycle in the hallway.
A group of scholars reworked the manuscripts – said to total over 1000 pages – to replace the romanization and render it acceptable to an academic press.