Bryant's Biography
23 March 1992
Bryant Yi-Hun Tan (陈 奕 恒) was born in Mills Memorial Hospital, San Mateo, California. He spent his first year in Diaz Lane, Foster City, California.
Summer 1993
The family moved to Germany, where we lived in Bremthal, a delightful village in the Taunus Hills between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden.
Autumn 1994
Bryant went to the Wiesbaden International School.
Winter 1996
The family moved back to Singapore. Bryant went to a local kindergarten.
August 1997
The family came to London and lived in Putney. Bryant enrolled in the Harrodian School in Barnes and took up karate. He also started violin lessons with Fiona Huggett.
Autumn 1999
Bryant started school in Colet Court, Barnes, London.
2001
Bryant started piano lessons with Lydia Newlands, who became his accompanist and aural training teacher for many years.
Autumn 2002- 2006
Bryant studied violin with Viktoria Grigoreva. He won a number of music prizes at various festivals, including the Bach Cup at the Richmond Performing Arts Festival in 2005.
April 2004
Bryant obtained a black belt in karate.
From 2004, Bryant did voluntary work for several years for the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore by helping them to create audiovisual educational tools during his free time.
Autumn 2005
Bryant won an academic as well as a music scholarship to St Paul’s School, Barnes, London.
2006
At St Paul's School, he earned distinctions in Olympiads, and won the Truro Prize in Mathematics.
Bryant started studying violin with Lutsia Ibragimova in the autumn.
He did weekly volunteer work in the Kitchen Garden of Chiswick House, London.
2008
He was awarded an Arkwright Scholarship.
He interned at Microsoft and Litmus (two software firms).
He co-founded the Sceptic Society in St Paul's School and was Joint Chairman of the Computing Society.
2009
He began a long business relationship with Firefly as a contractor-programmer.
He was Physics Editor of the School Science Magazine, Chairman of the Engineering Society, and a School Prefect.
Summer 2010
Bryant's team at St Paul's School won the European Space Agency’s CanSat Competition.
He was offered places in Corpus Christi College (Cambridge), Harvard University, and Stanford University.
Autumn 2010
Bryant entered Stanford University as a freshman.
2011
Bryant participated in the World Solar Challenge in Australia in the car Xenith built by the Solar Car Team in Stanford.
He had a summer internship at Facebook.
2012
He had a summer internship with Addepar.
2013
He had a summer internship at SpaceX.
He was offered a post-graduation job by SpaceX, which he accepted.
Summer 2014
Bryant graduated from Stanford with a bachelor's degree (distinction) as well as a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. He also received the Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Scholastic Award for outstanding academic achievement.
29 June 2014
The circumstances of Bryant’s passing
After a week in Iceland, Bryant came home to us in the UK with some friends. His friends left after two days for Spain, while Bryant left for Slovenia on the 27th June. They made arrangements to meet again in Slovenia on 1st July.
Bryant was hiking alone on the 28th and 29th June in the Triglav National Park near Ljubljana, Slovenia. On 29th June he decided to hike up to the Triglav peak, and it was on his descent from the peak that the weather changed for the worse. As the wind grew stronger it also started to rain. He slipped and fell off the trail about 15m down a steep slope and broke his left leg. He called for help, but the storm prevented the rescue helicopter from reaching the accident site.
The rescuers only reached him about four hours later. By then it was snowing and Bryant was unconscious with a weak pulse. They failed to revive him and he passed away about two hours later. The cause of death was later established to be hypothermia.