Short answers, pulled from the story.
Jan Nattier is known for substantially revising scholarly understanding of early Mahāyāna Buddhism, particularly by using Chinese translations of Buddhist texts as primary historical evidence. Her most cited contribution is a 1992 study arguing that the Heart Sutra was likely compiled in China rather than India.
Jan Nattier earned her PhD in Inner Asian and Altaic Studies from Harvard University in 1988.
In 1992, Jan Nattier published a re-examination arguing that the Heart Sutra was likely compiled in China, challenging the longstanding assumption that it originated in India.
A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra, published in 2003, is a translation and study of the Ugraparipṛcchā, an early Mahāyāna text. The book also contains an extended essay on methods for working with ancient Buddhist texts preserved in Chinese.
Jan Nattier argued that Mofa, the Age of Dharma Decline, was a Chinese development with no parallel in Indian sources, overturning the view that it was a pan-Buddhist concept originating in India.
Jan Nattier was married to John R. McRae (1947-2011), a professor who specialized in Chinese Chan Buddhism and authored The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chan Buddhism (1986) and Seeing through Zen (2003).