Wang Zhenyi
Throughout the ages, there have been many people who have made a name for their "talents", including many girls. For example, Cai Wenji, a great writer who made "Eighteen Beats of Hu Di", Su Hui, who woven the "Xuanjie Diagram", Xie Daoyun, who wrote "Not As If the Willows Rise Because of the Wind", Li Qingzhao, who "People Are Thinner Than Yellow Flowers", and so on. But in mathematics and astronomy, most of the famous people are men, and women can be said to be very few.
Wang Zhenyi is one of these few women, she is not only proficient in piano, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry and song, but also has studied mathematics, astronomy and other aspects, and is a rare female scientist in the Qing Dynasty. She has made great contributions to the development of science and received praise from Western countries, although she disappeared at the age of 29, but it has amazed the world for more than 200 years.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Wang Zhenyi when she was a teenager, unlike other women</h1>
Thirty-three years after Qianlong, Wang Zhenyi was born into a medical family in Jiangning Province. Her grandfather was Xuanhua Taishou (宣化太守) and had a solid family. Therefore, she has been well-fed since childhood, and is deeply loved by her parents and receives a top education. At the age of 11, she followed her family to Jilin to mourn for her grandfather, and lived in her ancestral home for 5 years.
den
In the ancestral house, there is a large study room, which stores all kinds of books collected by Wang Zhenyi's grandfather over the years, whether it is poetry and song, or chess and tea ceremony, from astronomy to geography. It is said that these books can be filled with seventy-five cabinets, which makes Wang Zhenyi, who has loved to read since childhood, very happy.
After eating every day, Wang Zhenyi would say hello to her family, and then go into the study, staying for most of the day, until her mother or father sent someone to call, and then she would come out of the study. But even after spending 5 years, Wang Zhenyi still did not read all of her grandfather's collection, and every time she looked back in the future, she deeply regretted it.
Later, at the age of 16, Wang Zhenyi followed her grandmother and father and traveled to Beijing, Shaanxi, Hubei and other places. She has been brilliant since she was a child, not like other women, only see those beautiful landscapes, only care about playing, but will see and hear on the road and the characteristic culture of various places, combined with the books she has read, one by one.
In this way, Wang Zhenyi, who was originally just a "soldier on paper", had a real experience, broadened her horizons a lot, and had "real learning and practical work". And Wang Zhenyi in her youth reflected her own distinctive side - the ancient people's boudoir, referring to most of the women's "dignified behavior", "knowledgeable and reasonable", "try not to leave the house".
However, Wang Zhenyi's parents are more open-minded, plus she is the only daughter in the family, and her parents are very pampered and reluctant to restrain her. Therefore, although Wang Zhenyi is proficient in piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, she is also very good at the "female red" that ancient women must learn; but she is eclectic, and when she travels with her father, she once worshiped the wife of a Mongolian general as a teacher, learning to ride a horse and shoot archery.
If it is a steppe woman, it is naturally no problem, and even this is a necessary skill for them, but when Wang Zhenyi, who is a central plains woman, made this request, many Mongolians expressed surprise, and some people directly issued a sneer. After all, in their minds, the Central Plains women are like delicate roses, weak and can't help the wind.
But Wang Zhenyi's desire to learn riding and shooting was strong, and the Mongolian general's wife praised her for being so courageous. He even taught her how to open a bow, aim, and shoot arrows, and personally selected a good colt for her. And she is not afraid of hardship, after "groping and crawling" on the grassland for a period of time, she can achieve the point of riding a horse "back and forth like flying" and shooting arrows "must be in the middle", which makes many grassland men look at each other.
Wang Zhenyi also wrote down triumphantly, a sentence "I have also learned to shoot and review riding, and I have covered the powder and chased after the qi jing." It can be seen that at this time, she has begun to pursue equality between men and women, in that era when most ordinary women are "afraid to say with complaints" and "have complaints that cannot be said", she dares to express her chest and bluntly say that it is not only men, but also women who can contribute to social development.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > faced with doubts, Wang Zhenyi was not afraid at all</h1>
Wang Zhenyi's thoughts and deeds were undoubtedly "bold and arbitrary" in the eyes of the people at that time. When she first began to study and study all kinds of knowledge besides poetry and songs, many people laughed at her. Studying medicine with her father, it is nothing to treat and save people, after all, there have been female doctors a long time ago, such as Bao Gu, Tan Yunxian and others.
However, when Wang Zhenyi began to study mathematics and astronomy, she was ridiculed by many people, especially some Taoists, who were even more outspoken, thinking that she was "fooling around" - even if it developed to the Qing Dynasty, there were still many people who still had superstitious ideas, did not believe in science, and felt that the term "astronomy" was just "heavenly fantasy".
But since she was a child, she had read many Western books in her grandfather's study; when she was young, she followed her father, Wang Zhenyi, who "went south and broke into the north", and her thoughts had long since broken through the feudal shackles. She believes that everything in the world has traces to follow, and that mysterious "metaphysics" may exist, but it is by no means the only answer.
In the face of the skeptical eyes of the people around her, and the doubts of some people, Wang Zhenyi was not afraid, and even argued with reason, and used her own strength to prove to the world that women are not inferior to men, and women can also become mathematicians and scientists to contribute to the research of mathematics and science. She summarized chinese and Western mathematical knowledge and wrote many books on mathematics.
Count the chips
For example, "Pythagorean Trigonometry", "Simple Almanac", "Easy to Know", and so on. Wang Zhenyi also specially studied the chipping algorithm introduced to China from Western countries, and wrote three books in a foreign way, explaining this algorithm in detail to the world and supplementing it. However, this Western algorithm was much more complex than the Chinese "multiplication and division method", so almost no one used it at the time, and it was not adopted until 1903.
For the study of astronomy and science, it actually stems from the "natural romance" of a little girl. When Wang Zhenyi was young, she especially liked to look up at the starry sky, and felt that the stars in the sky were constantly flashing, and they looked very good. Over time, this "looking up" turned into "observation" and "research", and she read the records of "stars" in the books collected by her grandfather.
In this regard, Wang Zhenyi has a strong interest, she will take others every day, give her father a telescope to observe the starry sky, and correspond to the stars in the book one by one, and then she was surprised to find that the "starry sky" will quietly undergo some changes, which fascinates her. She conducted research, flipped through a large number of books, and learned the mystery of "astronomy".
lunar eclipse
In the ancient book "Lingxian" left by my grandfather, the information of "lunar eclipse" was recorded, and the author of this book also proposed the concept that "the sun may be between the earth and the moon". This made Wang Zhenyi question, and the best way to break the doubt was to experiment. So, on a certain night, she only used a round mirror, a lamp and a small round table to restore the phenomenon of "lunar eclipse".
Wang Zhenyi hung a lamp on the beam of the room, acting as the "sun", the small round table was pushed down under the lamp, when the "earth", the round mirror in her hand was the "moon", she constantly adjusted the angle of the round mirror, conducted many experiments, and finally restored the "lunar eclipse". She wrote about this experimental process in the "Lunar Eclipse Solution", and she is also the only female scientist in the world to explain the "round place" of the universe after combining the "macroscopic" and "microscopic" of the universe.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > 29-year-old Wang Zhenyi, but she has stunned the world for more than 200 years</h1>
However, at that time, the Qing Dynasty was still in a relatively feudal period, and although everyone praised Wang Zhenyi's research results, there were not many people who could be admired, but she was not discouraged and had been busy with academic research. Her parents understood her ambitions and expressed their support, so even after her teenage years, she did not promise other women.
Instead, she waited until she was 25 years old, and Wang Zhenyi met Zhan Ming, who was also quite talented and had great respect for her. After the two fell in love for a while, they were happily married. However, because once Wang Zhenyi began to study, she would forget to sleep and forget to eat, accumulating over the years, and her health was getting worse and worse.
The two were accompanied by only 4 years of time, and Wang Zhenyi died of illness at the age of 29. In the more than 200 years since her death, her research results have shined in the world, highly praised by scientists at home and abroad, and even an asteroid. It was named after her.