Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2019
Volume 64, Number 2
Monday–Friday, March 4–8, 2019; Boston, Massachusetts
Session E69: History of Contemporary Chinese PhysicsInvited
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Sponsoring Units: FHP FIP Chair: Yuanrong Lu, Peking University Room: BCEC 052A |
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
E69.00001: Creating A Center of Theoretical Physics at Christian Yenching University in Peking: British physicist William Band's endeavor in the 1930s Invited Speaker: Danian Hu William Band (1906-1993) was a practical physicist from Liverpool, who came to Yenching University in 1929. Having taught several years in Peking (Beijing) and worked mostly on experimental projects, Band had realized by the mid-1930s that “many Chinese students have a considerable natural aptitude for theoretical work,” and that there was no place in China where students could receive adequate training in theoretical physics. Thus he was determined to concentrate on theoretical study and aspired to build a center at Yenching to explore modern theoretical physics and its philosophical basis. For this purpose, he spent his sabbatical leave at Cambridge University, studying with Ralph Fowler, Arthur Eddington, Paul Dirac, and Rudolf Peierls. Based on extensive archival research, I examine in this paper Band’s endeavors in both China and England, demonstrating significant contributions of both Band and the American funded Yenching University to Chinese physics development and revealing a missed opportunity for Band to propose independently the effect of gravitational lensing. |
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
E69.00002: From Binoculars to Cinetheodolite: The Development of Applied Optics and the Optical Industry in China Invited Speaker: Lie Sun The emergence of the applied optics and the optical industry in China primarily started during the Second World War and the Cold War periods, while the applied optics and the optical industry in China mainly developed through three ways: setting up plants, sending students to study overseas, and engaging in mission-oriented disciplinary development. In the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945), Gong Zutong and his colleagues, who had studied at the Technical University of Berlin, started to learn German optical technology. In 1939, the first batch of 6*30 Type Zhongzheng (Chiang Kai-shek) Binoculars were manufactured at the No. 22 Arsenal (Kunming) on a trial basis. The optical glass and accessories used by the binoculars were imported from Europe. From 1950s, industrial demand largely dominated the objectives and missions of China's sciences and industrial technologies. The mission-oriented disciplinary development model – the state's needs led the establishment and expansion of underlying disciplines – had direct impacts on the development of applied optics in China. Among others, an symbolic achievement was China's first large optical equipment developed by Wang Daheng and his colleagues in 1965 – a large cinetheodolite for observing satellite trajectories, fostering both a number of specialized research and development institutions on applied optics and the optics and instrument disciplines of some universities, and directly formulating one of the major features of the optics-related disciplines in China in the following decades, i.e., preferring development for practical purposes to fundamental researches. |
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
E69.00003: Entangled Worldlines: Four Physicists Whose Transnational Trajectories Reshaped Physics in China and the United States Invited Speaker: Zuoyue Wang Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee are eminent Chinese American physicists who not only shared the 1957 Nobel prize in physics for their breakthrough on parity conservation, but also made other important discoveries as well as played active roles in promoting US-China scientific exchanges. Less well-known were Deng Jiaxian and Zhu Guangya, close friends to Yang and Lee respectively who also received their PhDs in physics in the US but who made the choice to return to China in 1950 and became prominent leaders in Chinese science and technology. This talk explores the entangled trajectories of these American-educated Chinese physicists in an attempt to present a nuanced picture of the transnational characters of both Chinese and American science. |
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
E69.00004: Chinese Physicists' Construction of Straton (or Mao-particle) in the 1960s: the Chinese search for the structure of Hadrons under the guidance of Maoist philosophy Invited Speaker: Jinyan Liu Particle physics developed rapidly between the 1950s and the 1960s. The discovery of new particles at that time left particle physicists with an urgent need to make classification of them, to figure out their underlying relations and to put forward new conceptual and theoretical models. This brought about the proposition of the well-known Sakata model, Eight-fold way and quark model. What is rarely known is that Chinese particle physicists independently put forward a structure model of hadrons——straton model in 1966 inspired by Mao Zedong’s philosophy. Mao Zedong explicitly supported Shoichi Sakata, a Japanese physicist, in applying materialistic dialectics to physics research, which influenced Chinese physicists in their study of particle physics. Starting in the early 1960s, Chinese particle physicists engaged in the theoretical research of elementary particles. From 1965 to 1966, they analyzed the experimental results and existing theories available to them, made a connection between their work and Mao Zedong’s philosophy and proposed the straton model. In July 1966, the straton model was presented at the Summer Physics Colloquium of the Peking Symposium. Unfortunately, scientific research in China soon came to a halt due to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the academic exchange between Chinese scientists and their foreign peers became even more difficult than before. The calculation results of the hadron model failed to be formally published in English as Chinese scientists had wanted. As a result, the straton model did not have the kind of influence upon the development of particle physics at the international level that these scientists had expected. |
Tuesday, March 5, 2019 10:24AM - 11:00AM |
E69.00005: Physics and Politics Intertwined -- The manipulative moves in the 2016 supercollider controversy in China Invited Speaker: Tian Yu Cao The controversy in 2016 over the worthiness of building an extremely expensive supercollider in China was both scientific and political. The intricacies of the asymmetrical manipulative moves on the science-politics interface by the pro-side and the con-side will be analyzed. The talk will end with some general remarks on the determinants in agenda-setting for fundamental researches in China, which will be compared with those in the US. |
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