Li Jing (oral) National Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Liu Yan (finishing) Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences
In Beijing, I met and met Mr. Dai Wensai
In the autumn of 1948, on the occasion of the summer and autumn, I learned that Mr. Dai Wensai had not gone to Nanjing, but had reported to Yenching University.
Li Yuan told me an address, and at the same time told me a message: Mr. Dai Wensai's visit to Yanjing to teach this time must be just an intermediate process. There will be more fixed arrangements in the future, long-term plans, and it is entirely possible that he will go to Purple Mountain in the future. Li Yuan also revealed a message that Mr. Dai Wensai may start a family first after returning to Beijing. He said you were going to Yanjing and would most likely meet the future senior's wife. I wrote a letter to Mr. Devonsay, introduced myself, and met him for a while to be a guest. At that time, there was a school bus from downtown Beijing to Yenching University, so I took a school bus to Yenching University. He was in Yannan Garden, which was the professor's villa area, that is, the house where Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin lived. When I arrived at Mr. Dai's house, Mr. Dai went out to greet him, and I was a little surprised when I saw it. Because Mr. Devonsay appears to be older than he should be, mainly because his head is on top. When I entered his house, I found that he looked as if he had just returned from a trip, not at all like he was going to live in his own apartment at Peking University. The luggage was not packed, and the piles were stacked in the east and the boxes in the west were open there, and it was not at all like the situation in which there was a long-term solution.
Mr. Dai welcomed me very warmly and introduced his work on spectroscopy in stellar physics when he studied in the UK, his college graduation thesis, etc. At that time, I talked to Mr. Dai very extensively, and knowing that he could also play clarinets, he took out the sheet music and hummed it, and I knew that he could read it. Among the older generation of astronomers in China, there are still many who like classical music, but there are not many who can read music. Devonsay is one of the very few classical music lovers who can read music. In this way, Mr. Dai and I have become friends in the field of music again, and I am very happy. That time I also had dinner at his house, where he had a male servant cooking.
So I got to know a great astronomer.
Astronomical Terms, 1952
Mr. Dai had already decided that he was going to take root in the field of astronomy after he went abroad, before returning to China, and at this stage he did a major thing.
In 1934, the Chinese Astronomical Society published a book called "Astronomical Terms", which was famous in the world at that time. There are Several Texts of English, German, French, and Japanese, and it is now a cultural relic.
After meeting Mr. Dai in 1948, I learned that he had accumulated some new astronomical terms at hand. Mr. Dai was a man of heart, and he had begun to pay attention to the work of astronomical terms long before entering the field of astronomy. He made a collection of cards for astronomical terms, with Chinese on the front and English on the reverse, and wrote the provenance. This kind of card is a necessary tool for the older generation of astronomers, or any discipline, to revise scientific terms. He told me that the Astronomical Terms, published in 1934, would probably be reprinted.
In 1952, shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China and when the cause of education was in ruins, Mr. Dai Wensai did compile and publish a new "Astronomical Terms". This is the first book after the founding of New China, supplementing a large gap in the astronomical terms of Chinese after 1934, which should be immeasurable.
Astronomical Terms in Three Trilingual Formats
In February 1957, the Chinese Astronomical Society held the first member congress after the founding of the People's Republic of China in Nanjing, at which there was an important decision: to publish the second dictionary of astronomical terms in New China in the name of the Astronomical Society, hoping to complete it within a time limit of two years. Therefore, a new committee for the approval of astronomical terms was formed, with Mr. Dai Wensai as the director, and there were two or three members below, all of whom were associate researchers or above. But at that time, my colleague Shen Liangzhao and I at the Purple Mountain Observatory were just research interns, and we were still two gears away from entering. Thus became the staff of the Committee. The contents of the dictionary are determined by ourselves according to Mr. Dai's guidance, and there are three versions: English, Russian, Chinese and Chinese. One is the beginning of English, Britain-China-Russia; one is the beginning of Russian, Russian-English-Chinese; one is the beginning of Chinese, China, Britain and Russia. These three dictionaries are the tasks we ourselves added.
Since 1956, I have continued Mr. Devonsay's unfinished task in Kunming, expanding his bilingual cross-reference cards into two more types: one is Russian-Chinese, the other is Russian-English, a total of three cards. At that time, Shen Liangzhao was not in good health, probably because his respiratory organs were not very good, so he was nominally a three-person team, but in fact it was only a two-person group of me and Dai Wensai. I took the collected and approved cards to the Department of Astronomy of Nanjing University, and after lunch with Mr. Dai Wensai, I reviewed them together, and did so for two years.
In 1959, I was transferred to the Beijing Observatory and went to Beijing with these three stacks of cards. Mr. Devonsay was very generous, did not say anything about copyright, royalties, did not consider it, and gave it to me. I handed over the three stacks of cards to Science Press. It was nominally approved by the Science Press, but in fact it was quickly approved because of the reputation of Devinsa. All three books were published before New Year's Day 1960. It should be said that the tasks entrusted to it by the Chinese Astronomical Society were completed on schedule and successfully.
Astronomical Terms in the Russian-Chinese-English Trilingual Format of 1959
The Astronomical Terminology Approval Committee has always been regarded as an astronomical public good, and there is little talk of remuneration. "Travel expenses", at that time, there was no such term. In the 1959 "Astronomical Terms", the title of the big title was the Chinese Astronomical Society, and the subtitle became Li Jing and Shen Liangzhao, but there was no Dai Wensai. It was all a decision of the superiors, and I don't know how it was arranged. I finally hung up a name, and there was a very limited fee.
This is a big work completed by the Chinese Astronomical Society in 1959 when it was a gift to the National Day: "Astronomical Terms" in three trilingual formats. This set of "nouns" was used and flourished until the "Cultural Revolution".
After that, Mr. Dai and I were in the north of the South China Sea, across the Yangtze River. The opportunities to work together are also relatively small, but there are still opportunities for meetings together, so I still meet Mr. Dai often. When we met Mr. Dai, we had a permanent topic, that is, the approval of astronomical terms, which was our eternal issue.
But then it was very, very regrettable that in 1979, Mr. Dai died of liver cancer, leaving a lot of unfinished business. He worked tirelessly all his life, and I guess that with such a literary hero as his, there must be a lot of prose that can be published at hand.
Here, I would like to take this opportunity to ask my wife to record for me during my recuperation at the Sino-Japanese Hospital in Beijing, and to review some of the past events from the early 1950s to the last period of 1959, mainly focusing on the approval of astronomical terms.
（2021.04）
(This article is published in "The Realm of Heaven and Earth, Cosmic Feelings- A Collection of Commemorative Essays of Mr. Dai Wensai", Nanjing University Press, 2022.01)
Editor-in-charge: Yuan Fengfang
National Astronomical Journal of China, January 2022
The Complete Book of Celestial Signs in 2022