Vol. 39, No.4, October 2010
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Zhu Kezhen and His Contributions to the History of Science in China
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Zhu Kezhen and His Contributions to the History of Science in China
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Notes from the Inside
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News and Inquiries
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Member News
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Cold War Transformed Science: A Report on the Francis Bacon Conference at Cal Tech
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Conversing in a Cyberspace Community: The Growth of
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Multiple Ways to Salvation: Tenure and Teaching-Intensive Appointments
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by Liu Dun, Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
Fig.1
A page of references from the draft of Zhu Kezhen’s Climatic Changes (1972).
Zhu Kezhen; also Chu Co-Ching and [Wade Giles] Chu K’o-chen, (1890–1974) was from Shangyu in Zhejiang Province. In 1910 he went to the United States to study agronomy and meteorology at the College of Agriculture of the University of Illinois. After completing his studies there in 1913, he went to Harvard University where, five years later, he received his PhD in meteorology. On his return to China he began teaching and editing at Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai and Tianjin, and, beginning in 1920, he served as chair of the Department of Meteorology at Nanjing University. In 1928 he joined the Academia Sinica, and founded China’s first Institute of Meteorology (in Nanjing). In 1936 he became President of Zhejiang University, and, after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Zhu became Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). As early as the 1920s he had taken an interest in the history of the science, and he wrote more than thirty papers on the history of astronomy, climatology, geography, and on historiographical issues on the history of science in ancient China. He paid special attention to collating and analyzing China’s ancient scientific legacy. His masterpiece, “A Preliminary Study on the Climatic Changes in the Past 5000 Years in China,” is an extraordinary example of “using the past to serve the present.” Partly due to this paper, Zhu is considered a pioneer of the long-term study of phenology.
Zhu was a crucial figure in the planning and organization of the history of science in the People’s Republic of China. His article, “Why Study the History of China’s Ancient Science,” published in the People’s Daily on August 27, 1954, was a sign that the history of science in China was entering a new phase of systematic organization. In February of 1956 Zhu chaired a consultative meeting of experts that discussed the formulation of a plan for developing the history of science as a discipline. In September of that year he led a delegation to the VIIIth International Congress for the History of Science in Florence and Milan, Italy, where New China was accepted as a member of the International Union of the History of Science (now the Division of the History of Science and Technology of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science) during the Congress.
As a result of this acceptance, on 3 September 1956 a Chinese delegation participated for the first time in an international meeting on the history of science. Figure 2 shows Zhu Kezhen addressing the opening ceremony. Seated at the platform and recognizable in the picture are, according to Zhu’s handwritten notes, from left to right: Raymond Klibansky (Canada), William-Henri Schopfer (President), Roberto Almagià (Italy), and Fritz Bodenheimer (Israel). In fact, Schopfer’s nationality was Swiss, and he served two consecutive terms as second vice-president of the International Union of the History of Science. The other figures in the photograph remain to be identified.
Fig. 2
Zhu Kezhen addressing opening ceremony at the VIII International Congress for the History of Science in Florence and Milan, Italy, in 1956.
At the VIIIth ICHS Zhu Kezhen presented a paper on “The Origin of Twenty-Eight Mansions in Astronomy,” which was a favorite topic that he had pursued for the past twelve years. In his diary for April 14, 1944, Zhu outlined the essential features of this research (Figure 3).
Fig. 3
Zhu Kezhen’s diary entry for April 14, 1944.
Following the Congress, the Chinese delegation visited the Institute of Computing Technology of the Italian Academy of Sciences. At that time, the electronic computer was the latest in scientific equipment. Zhu wrote at the top of the picture shown in Figure 4: “The machine in use at the Rome Institute of Computing Science is an electronic digital computer by the Ferranti Company in the United States [Regarding this Zhu was incorrect; Ferranti was a British firm. - ed]. The director of the institute is Prof. Mauro Picone and the engineer who guided us is named Vacca.” At the bottom of the picture those present are indicated by Zhu himself, from left to right, as: Li Yan (member of the Chinese delegation, historian of mathematics), Zhu Kezhen, Liu Xianzhou (member of the Chinese delegation, mechanical expert), Mme Regard, Dr. Vacca.
Fig. 4
Notated photograph of Zhu Kezhen showing the electronic computer at the Rome Institute of Computing Science.
On the back of the photograph (Fig. 5), Zhu wrote that the picture was taken on September 17, 1956, and that Vacca’s father had been to China to study the history of science. In fact, Dr. Vacca’s father was Professor Giovanni Vacca (1872–1953), originally a mathematician but also a scholar fascinated by the history of mathematics and politics. In 1898 he started to study Chinese culture and to learn the language. G. Vacca lived in Chengdu, China, from 1907 to 1908. In 1910 he received his doctorate in Chinese studies from the University of Florence, and the following year he was offered a position teaching Chinese literature at the University of Rome; in 1922 he returned to Florence where he accepted the chair for History and Geography of East Asia at the University.
Fig. 5
Back side of photo in Figure 4.
Thanks to Zhu Kezhen’s planning and guidance, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established the Research Office for the History of Natural Science on January 1, 1957; in 1975 this became the Institute for the History of Natural Science. Two and a half years later, in 1959, Zhu led a Chinese delegation (Figure 6) to attend a national conference relating to the history of science and technology in the Soviet Union.
One of the delegation’s aims was to learn about developing the history of science at the state level from their Russian comrade-colleagues. The Soviet Institute was in a building of the Polytechnical Museum in the center of Moscow—Новая площадь 3 (which is still the museum’s address). The Chinese delegation came to Moscow by invitation of the USSR Academy in order to facilitate contacts in the history of science and technology between the two countries. The Chinese delegation also participated in the Plenum of the Soviet National Committee of the Historian and Philosophers of Science and Technology (27 May to 1 June 1959).
Fig. 6
At the front door to the building in Moscow housing the Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, June 4, 1959. From left to right: Li Yan (historian of mathematics), Nikoli Aleksandrovich Figurovskii (A historian of chemistry, he was at that time the director of the USSR Institute), Zhu Kezhen (Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, head of China’s delegation), Xi Zezong (historian of astronomy), and an unidentified Russian colleague.
To commemorate the life and achievements of Professor Zhu Kezhen, the founder of modern China’s history of science endeavours, the Institute for the History of Natural Science, CAS, has established the Zhu Kezhen History of Science Visiting Professorship, as well as the Zhu Kezhen Award for outstanding original scholarship in the history of science, technology or medicine in East Asia, awarded once every three years by the International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (ISHEASTM).
All photos reproduced in this essay are published here courtesy of Mrs. Zhu Song, Professor Zhu Kezhen’s daughter. The author also appreciates Professors Joseph Dauben and Serguei Demidov for their valuable comments.