Perhaps you know the father of China's two bombs, the father of aerospace, the father of optics, the father of mechanics, and the Nobel Prize winners in physics, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao. But they don't necessarily know that their teacher is the same person, a "master of masters" who has long been unknown to us.
Why is the more elite the university, the more students love retreats?
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.
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.
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?
▲Ye Qisun
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.
Even Chai Jing exclaimed: "And I only learned of his existence today."
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.
Ye Qisun in his early years
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." ”
Ye Qisun's students
Wang Ganchang, the founder of nuclear physics on the mainland, 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.
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. He is also known for his strict teaching. He allowed the student not to listen to his lessons "because you read reference books that are smarter than mine," but "your experiments were not done seriously, and you deducted 25 points."
He no longer asked for harvest, but only about cultivation.
He no longer asks for harvest, but for cultivation.
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, New China had given birth to 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.
Ye Qisun in his later years
He never married, but was close to his students, one of whom was called Xiong Dajian, which was the deepest relationship in his life.
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.
Ye Qisun (center) and Xiong Dajian (second from left) pose with anti-war soldiers.
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.
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." ”
During the ten years of turmoil, after hearing that Yao Tongbin was beaten to death by a stick and that 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." ”
Qian Sanqiang was then the deputy director of the Second Machine Department, in charge of the atomic bomb project.
His students were well aware of his intentions: "He knows such an important job, and he is most afraid of dealing with those who have political problems, and he is afraid that Qian Sanqiang will suffer some misfortune because of this."
His nephew said he 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 own life." ”
▲Ye Qisun
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 it over to Fan Ye's writing ((A passage in the Book of Prison and Nephew:)
If I am mad and destroyed, I can say that Ru and so on should be forsaken by sinners, but the ordinary deeds are already in the arms, and they should be found, and as for whether they can or not, the meaning is understood, and ru and so on may not know.
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."
▲ Famous scientists Shi Jiajiong and Wang Ganchang (left) unveiled the newly completed bronze statue of Ye Qisun at Tsinghua University.
"But the ordinary life is already in my arms, and I should be able to find it..."
In 1929, he said in an article called "The Past, Present, and Future of The Chinese Scientific Community":
Some people suspect that the Chinese nation is not suitable for studying science, and I think these arguments are unfounded.
China has only recently understood the importance of studying science, and we have not yet undergone long-term experiments, and we cannot say that we lack the ability to study science.
I only hope that everyone will work together to do academic research and make a judgment fifty years later. Gentlemen must know that a nation without natural science must not be able to gain a foothold in modern times.
Eighty years later, everything he planted in the blank space allowed future generations like me to live in a shadowy world, and I only learned of the existence of Mr. Ye Qisun today.
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.
100 years ago you were desperate
Save the ignorant and backward peoples of that time
We are too fast in history
Almost forgot about you
I hope that in the near future, the prosperity will be as you wish