China and Albert Einstein: The Reception of the Physicist and His Theory in China, 1917-1979

by Danian Hu

Overview

China and Albert Einstein is the first extensive study in English or Chinese of China’s reception of the celebrated physicist and his theory of relativity. Tracing the influence of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century and Western missionaries and educators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as they introduced key concepts of Western physical science and paved the way for Einstein’s radical new ideas, Danian Hu shows us that Chinese receptivity was fostered by the trickle of Chinese students sent abroad for study beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and by the openness of the May Fourth Movement (1916–1923).

In a series of biographical studies of Chinese physicists, Hu describes the Chinese assimilation of relativity and explains how Chinese physicists offered arguments and theories of their own. Hu’s account concludes with the troubling story of the fate of foreign ideas such as Einstein’s in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when the theory of relativity was denigrated along with Einstein’s ideas on democracy and world peace.

China and Albert Einstein is an important contribution to Einstein studies and a landmark work in the history of Chinese science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674038882
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	271
File size:	783 KB

About the Author

Danian Hu is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and the Asian Studies Program at the City College of New York.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1 1 Western Physics Comes to China 5 2 China Embraces the Theory of Relativity 47 3 Six Pioneers of Relativity 86 4 From Eminent Physicist to the "Poor Philosopher" 130 5 Einstein: A Hero Reborn from the Criticism 152 Epilogue 182 Notes 191 Index 247

What People are Saying About This

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. I believe it is a highly original contribution, certainly to my own field of the history of relativity. It is the first study of the reception of relativity theory into a society with little background in nineteenth-century physics, and it is likely to be the most important of such studies, given China's substantial contribution to twentieth-century physics. Einstein scholars and biographers will find it extremely useful.

Jonathan Spence

How and why was it that between 1917 and the mid-1920s the Chinese were able to absorb Einstein's relativity theories so swiftly, painlessly, and virtually without controversy? In this absorbing book Danian Hu provides us with cogent and elegant answers. As an added bonus, Danian Hu humanizes his study by his numerous and vivid mini-biographies of Chinese physicists at many levels of expertise. The attempt by the leading ideologues of the Cultural Revolution to force through a radical rejection of Einstein's relativity theories provides a grim and gripping coda to a remarkable story."
— Jonathan Spence, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University

Daniel Kennefick

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. I believe it is a highly original contribution, certainly to my own field of the history of relativity. It is the first study of the reception of relativity theory into a society with little background in nineteenth-century physics, and it is likely to be the most important of such studies, given China's substantial contribution to twentieth-century physics. Einstein scholars and biographers will find it extremely useful.
— Daniel Kennefick, Einstein Papers Project, California Institute of Technology

Alexei Kojevnikov

China and Albert Einstein is a novel and original contribution to the as yet seriously understudied but extremely important field, the history of science in modern China. It introduces a wealth of new information and greatly increases our knowledge about the reception and assimilation of Einstein's theory of relativity in China during the turbulent twentieth century. The study actually delivers even more, since by using relativity theory as a crucial example, Danian Hu explains some general features of the process of transplating modern science onto Chinese soil.
— Alexei Kojevnikov, University of Georgia

Editorial Reviews

How and why was it that between 1917 and the mid-1920s the Chinese were able to absorb Einstein’s relativity theories so swiftly, painlessly, and virtually without controversy? In this absorbing book Danian Hu provides us with cogent and elegant answers. As an added bonus, Danian Hu humanizes his study by his numerous and vivid mini-biographies of Chinese physicists at many levels of expertise. The attempt by the leading ideologues of the Cultural Revolution to force through a radical rejection of Einstein’s relativity theories provides a grim and gripping coda to a remarkable story.

Jonathan Spence

China and Albert Einstein is a novel and original contribution to the as yet seriously understudied but extremely important field, the history of science in modern China. It introduces a wealth of new information and greatly increases our knowledge about the reception and assimilation of Einstein’s theory of relativity in China during the turbulent twentieth century. The study actually delivers even more, since by using relativity theory as a crucial example, Danian Hu explains some general features of the process of transplanting modern science onto Chinese soil.

Alexei Kojevnikov

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. I believe it is a highly original contribution, certainly to my own field of the history of relativity. It is the first study of the reception of relativity theory into a society with little background in nineteenth-century physics, and it is likely to be the most important of such studies, given China’s substantial contribution to twentieth-century physics. Einstein scholars and biographers will find it extremely useful.

Daniel Kennefick