His students are famous all over the world, and he is thunderous in his professional field. He has made countless students admire, and he has made countless students sentimental. He trained 79 academicians for new China, and more than half of the 23 two-bomb meritorious service were his students.
His eldest disciples, Wang Ganchang, the founder of China's nuclear physics, Qian Xuesen, the "father of missiles" in China, the "father of the atomic bomb," the "father of the hydrogen bomb," the "father of satellites," the "father of mechanics," and the "father of optics," were all students he cultivated with his own hands!
Lin Jiaqiao, the first Chinese to become a member of the National Academy of Sciences, was his student.
Dai Zhenduo, the first Chinese to become a member of the American Academy of Engineering, was also his student.
Hua Luogeng said: "I have been loved and loved by him all my life. ”
Yang Zhenning, the Nobel laureate in physics, could not wait to visit his mentor when he first returned to China in 1971, but was rejected by the relevant government departments.
Li Zhengdao said with gratitude: "He decided my fate." ”
Without him, the fate of Tsinghua University and the scientific development of New China would have hit a big question mark.
In 1935, some teachers and students of the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University took a group photo, and there were 11 future academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in this photo. The fourth left in the front row is Ye Qisun.
He was unmarried, childless, and treated his students as his own children.
It is no exaggeration to say that he and his students have supported most of the Chinese scientific community, but have you heard of such a master-level giant?
I am afraid that few people know about it, because he was once regarded as a "sinner of the state" and the news of his death was not allowed to be published in all newspapers. At one point, he was reduced to begging in Zhongguancun, and when he died, he was forbidden to publish newspapers to explain.
He is Ye Qisun, a true intellectual, and also the "last master of China", a master who we know the latest and has been abandoned by the times the farthest.
Let's first look at how tough he is:
In the last year of the Qing Dynasty, Ye Qisun was admitted to the first batch of places in the Tsinghua Academy, and he was less than 13 years old.
In 1913, Ye Qisun took a photo when he applied for the Tsinghua Academy
Later, he traveled far and wide, studied under Nobel laureate Bridgeman, and measured the h-value of Planck's constant, which was the most accurate in the world at that time. The experimental results were published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences and the Journal of the Optical Society, and were quickly recognized by the international scientific community and were used for 16 years. This year, he was 23 years old.
At the age of 27, he returned to China and founded the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University. At the age of 31, he founded the Faculty of Science at Tsinghua University, which includes six departments of arithmetic, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology and geoscience.
I couldn't get a teacher at the time. He set the salary of Wu Youxun, a teacher who had worked so hard and was not as old as his own, to be higher than his own. Later, in his prime, he successively recommended Wu Youxun to replace him as the head of the Department of Physics and the dean of the School of Science.
In the 1930s, Tsinghua was just a preparatory school for studying in the United States with an academic gap, and it was the School of Science that allowed Tsinghua to counterattack to its current position.
Ye Qisun in the 1930s
Ye Qisun said: Wherever talented people are produced, it is bound to be the place where science and culture are most prevalent, the scientific soil is the most fertile, and the scientific atmosphere is the strongest. For example, Göttingen in Europe, Munich and Chicago in the United States.
Chinese scientific research has stagnated for thousands of years, because For the first time, Ye Qisun has a hot ambition: "In addition to cultivating scientific talents, we still seek to establish a center of research and science in order to seek China's academic independence." ”
Two
Let's take a look at how tough his students are:
After reading this long, staggering list, I think everyone will be stunned.
Wang Ganchang, the founder of nuclear physics in China, was his eldest disciple.
China's "father of satellites" Zhao Jiuzhang, "father of the hydrogen bomb" Peng Huanwu (one said to be Yu Min), "father of the atomic bomb" Qian Sanqiang, "father of missiles" Qian Xuesen, "father of mechanics" Qian Weichang, and "father of optics" Wang Daheng are all students he personally cultivated.
Deng Jiaxian, Zhou Guangzhao, Zhu Guangya, these heavyweight names are also his protégés.
Yang Zhenning, the world's leading theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate in Physics, is also his student. In 1971, when Yang Zhenning first returned to China, he offered to visit his mentor, but the government refused.
Another Nobel laureate, Lee Jeong-do, who was also his student, said: "He decided my destiny. In 1946, Ye Qisun sent Li Zhengdao, who was only 19 years old, to the United States for further study, and was even questioned when applying for a passport: "How is it a child?" ”。 Half a century later, Li Zhengdao returned to China and saw the yellowed examination paper that he had treasured all his life again, and he couldn't help but choke.
Above is Ye Qisun's handwriting: Li Zhengdao, Electromagnetism, 58 + 25 = 83 points. Ye Qisun is famous for his strict teaching, allowing Li Zhengdao not to listen to his own lessons, "because the reference books you read are smarter than mine"; but "your experiments are not serious, and you can only get 25 points".
The first Chinese elected to the National Academy of Sciences was his student, Lin Jiaqiao. The first Chinese to be elected to the U.S. Academy of Engineering was his student, Dai Zhenduo.
Mathematician Master Hua Luogeng said: "I have been loved and loved by him all my life. Hua Luogeng only had a junior high school education, and it was Ye Qisun Li who let him teach in the Mathematics Department of Tsinghua University and sent him to Cambridge University for further study. Chen Shengshen, who was on a par with Hua Luogeng, also benefited from his teachings and later became the greatest geometrist of the 20th century and the father of modern differential geometry.
Residence No. 7 of the North Courtyard in Tsinghua Park, where Ye Qisun lived since 1925, was only left in 1952 when the institution was adjusted.
By the 1960s, China had produced 23 two-bomb founders, half of whom were his protégés. The number of academicians he eventually trained for the country reached 79.
It was such a great teacher and pioneer that no one could have imagined his later fate.
Three
Ye Qisun taught so many great students, the one who made him pay the most attention to his heart and the deepest feelings was an unknown young man named Xiong Dajian.
Xiong Dajian
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the enthusiastic Xiong Dajian gave up the opportunity to study in Germany and went to the anti-Japanese base area in Central Hebei to serve as the minister of supply under General Lü Zhengcao. Xiong Dajian used what Qinghua had learned to manufacture explosives, detonators, radio transmitters, and other military materials for the troops, and to provide weapons and equipment for mine warfare.
The TNT medicinal mines that once blew up the front of Japanese locomotives came from the "Technical Research Society" where Xiong Dajian worked, not from the peasant soil method in the movie "Mine Warfare" that we watched when we were children.
With Chen Daisun and Wu Mi at Lugou Bridge
In 1939, when relations between the Kuomintang and the Communists deteriorated, Xiong Was suspected of being a Kuomintang agent, secretly arrested, and stoned to death during the escort process without investigation and verification and without going through legal procedures.
After that, because there was no scientific and technological force to self-control, the soldiers in Jizhong could only take empty guns and stuff straw in bullet bags for a period of time.
A few years after Xiong Dajian's unjust death, Ye Qisun insisted on complaining about the student who had been dependent on him for his life, and finally he was burned and imprisoned.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Ye Qisun remained the head of Tsinghua for a period of time until 1951. Ye Qisun, who was already a septuagenarian at the time, was slandered as the introducer of Xiong Dajian becoming a spy of the Central Unification, accused of being a state sinner, severely beaten, wounded in the spine, and incontinent.
Ye Qisun spent a year and a half in prison. Huang Yanfu, who has read the interrogation records, said that all his words were actually only one sentence: "I am a scientist, I am honest, I do not tell lies." ”
After hearing that Yao Tongbin, the founder of the two bombs, was beaten to death with a stick, and his beloved disciple Zhao Jiuzhang committed suicide with hatred, he had a mental breakdown and hallucinations. Later released, his legs were swollen and difficult to stand, his body was bent to ninety degrees, there was no human form, and he was begging on the street of Zhongguancun.
At that time, many people in the Zhongguancun area had seen him, wearing a pair of torn cotton shoes with cracked heads, and sometimes went to a small stall, reached out to the stall owner for one or two small apples, and chewed them as they walked.
If he meets someone who looks like a student, he will reach out and say, "You have money to give me a few."
Ye Qisun in 1962, this is also a rare photo of Ye Qisun in his life with a smile.
Later he regained some sanity. Once Qian Sanqiang bumped into him on the road in Zhongguancun and immediately ran up to say hello. As soon as Ye Qisun saw him coming, he immediately said, "You hurry up and leave me, quickly avoid me, and when you see me in the future, don't pay attention to me anymore, hide from me." ”
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Ye Qisun also died. It is said that before his death, he was still muttering: "Go back to Tsinghua, go back to Tsinghua..." According to the requirements of the relevant departments, all newspapers and periodicals did not publish the news of Ye Qisun's death.
Four
In 1987, with the efforts of General Lü Zhengcao, he and Xiong Dajian were finally rehabilitated. At this time, it had been ten years since his death, and it had been nearly fifty years since the unjust death of his student Xiong Dajian.
His nephew said that Ye Qisun never told anyone about his misery, "his view seems to be that there are many things that have been wronged in the world and in history, and there is no need to lament his life." What a generous thing this is.
He just used to sit in an old wicker chair and read some classical poems or history books to pass the time.
In the spring of 1948, Ye Qisun visited the home of Chen Yinke, a master of traditional Chinese studies
Ye Qisun was born in Shanghai, and his father was an old-fashioned literati, so he read a subset of the history of the Bible from an early age. He was gentle with words, but he maintained a gentle gentleman's style all his life.
He died on 13 January 1977. At the end of his life, when Qian Linzhao went to see him, he took out the "Book of Song" and turned to a passage in Fan Ye's "Book of Prison and Nephew": "I am mad and destroyed, and it is impossible to say that Ru and others should be abandoned as sinners, but the ordinary life is already in the arms, it should be found, as to whether it can be understood, the meaning is understood, Ru and so on or not know." ”
I repeated these words of his: "If I am so mad that I will be destroyed, I will not be able to repeat it, and ru and so on should be forsaken by sinners..."
Until the 1980s, after he had been rehabilitated, when Tsinghua wanted to make a statue for him, some people still said, "If you want to make this artificial image, I will pee on it."
"But the ordinary life is already in my arms, and I should be able to find it..."
Eighty years have passed, and everything he planted in the blank space has allowed our descendants to live in a shadowy world without us knowing the existence of Ye Qisun.
"As for whether it can be or not, it is understood, or it is not known..."
In 1992, hundreds of scholars at home and abroad jointly appealed for Tsinghua University to erect a bronze statue for him.
In 1995, the bronze statue was inaugurated.
On April 30, 1995, the famous scientist Shi Jiajiong and Ye Qisun's disciple Wang Ganchang (left) unveiled the newly completed bronze statue of Ye Qisun at Tsinghua University
Remember his name: Ye Qisun (1898-1977).
He never married, had no children, but was full of peach and plum.
He laid the foundation for tsinghua science scholarship and the scientific development of new China, trained 79 academicians for new China, but became a "national sinner" at the end of his life.
More than a hundred years ago, he was determined at a young age to save this ignorant and backward nation.
I hope that in the near future, the prosperity will be as you wish.