SMH: US-educated scientist was father of China's space program

rlsrls08

http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/useducated-scientist-was-father-of-chinas-space-program-20091103-hv4a.html

US-educated scientist was father of China's space program




[size=1.2em]Qian Xuesen was one of the greatest Chinese scientists of the modern era, and a man widely regarded as the father of China's missile and space program. His life spanned the final few days of the Qing Dynasty, through the Republican period, from 1912 to 1949, and on to the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. It also embodied the conflicts between the US and China, the two countries where he spent most of his life, and between which he was forced to choose.

[size=1.2em]Qian was the son of a government official, born on December 11, 1910, in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province. He was educated at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and, in 1935, with the help of a scholarship, went first to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then, a year later, to the California Institute of Technology, where he was awarded his doctorate.

[size=1.2em]In California, during World War II, his research concentrated on jet propulsion. With a number of other US scientists, responding to the German V1 and V2 rockets, he devised a range of highly effective missiles, which proved crucial in the final stages of the war effort. Qian also took part in the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. As a result of this, he was made the first director of the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Centre at Caltech in 1949.

[size=1.2em]In the same year, the communists won their final push to become rulers of China, exiling the Nationalist leadership under Chiang Kai-shek, whom the US had largely supported, to the island of Taiwan. Qian was suspected of being a communist sympathiser, his application for US citizenship was denied and he was detained after applying to leave America. One US official at the time called this the ''stupidest thing this country ever did''. In 1955 Qian was allowed to return to China.

[size=1.2em]The US's loss was China's gain at a critical period in its development. Qian was allowed to establish an Institute of Mechanics in Beijing, and his skills and knowledge were critical at a time when many of China's most talented scientists had refused to return home. A symbol of the respect and trust Qian enjoyed was his admission to the Communist Party in 1958. He started work on what was to become the Dongfeng missile.

[size=1.2em]As a result of his work and of support from the Soviet Union (despite the fact that relations between these two countries had deteriorated badly in the late 1950s), China was able to test its atomic bomb in 1963-64.

[size=1.2em]Qian seems to have been largely unaffected by the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966, probably because he was working in such a strategic area. While chaos reigned in the rest of China, military and technical research continued unaffected.

[size=1.2em]In 2009, as China is preparing to build a space exploration launch pad on the island of Hainan, and has set itself the aim of getting a Chinese man on the moon in the next decade, Qian's contribution to the country's space and missile program was critical. Much of the technology behind the Shenzhou rockets, launched from the 1990s onwards to national fanfare, can be traced back to research that Qian undertook. And much of that was based on what he had studied in the US during his 20 years there.

[size=1.2em]After his retirement in 1991, Qian maintained a low profile, despite being garlanded with awards. His wife, the acclaimed Beijing opera singer Jiang Ying, survives him.