Welcome to The History Column No. 2614. In 1956, during the fiery construction of the "First Five-Year Plan" of New China, the central government officially proposed to "march toward science". Before that, a major event occurred in the scientific community of New China, that is, the return of Mr. Qian Xuesen, a famous aerodynamicist and engineering control expert. In October 1955, the Qian Xuesen family overcame many obstacles and traveled a long distance from the United States to Chinese mainland, playing an immeasurable role in China's scientific and military research undertakings.
In February 1956, General Chen Geng specially invited Mr. Qian Xuesen to give a lecture on military science for senior platons of the People's Liberation Army in Beijing. The theme of the lecture is "Introduction to Missiles", which Qian Xuesen is good at. Some friends may ask, there are many founding generals, why did General Chen Geng invite Qian Xuesen? Because at this time Chen Geng was the principal of The Kazakh Military Industry, specializing in the study of modern military science and technology, and General Chen Geng himself was an extremely active general, liked to contact new things, and had a strong interest in new weapons and new technologies, so he particularly respected Mr. Qian Xuesen, who had just returned to China, and invited him to the army to give a lecture, and Qian Xuesen gladly accepted.
At that time, many cadres in Beijing came to listen to Qian Xuesen's lectures with great enthusiasm, and they all carried notebooks and carefully recorded them. Among the participants in the lecture, even four famous founding marshals: He Laozong, Chen Laozong, Nie Shuai and Ye Shuai were all present on time to study. Qian Xuesen was the world's top aerodynamicist at that time, and the classes he taught did not have a professional knowledge background, could he understand it? Limited by objective conditions, there were not too many cadres in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China who had a high level of education.
In fact, Qian Lao's lecture is very in-depth and simple, and he gave an example on the day of the lecture: Before scientific research in the United States, all kinds of foundations were needed to provide funds to implement research projects, so the content of the lecture needed to have the characteristics of popular science, and a profound theory could be fully understood and accepted by the audience with concise and clever words. Therefore, the generals and marshals present here all felt that Qian Xuesen's lecture was of great benefit and could be fully understood and listened to. In particular, he talked about a lot of missile-related knowledge that day, and some cadres of our army had not really come into contact with it before, which can be said to be an eye-opener.
The cadre who benefited the most from this class was Nie Shuai, because Nie Shuai was the general person in charge of military equipment work, and in 1958 he officially became the director of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission, and the improvement of our army's military science and technology level was closely related to him. Later, in the research and development of "two bombs and one satellite", Nie Shuai and Qian Xuesen had a lot of cooperation, and Nie Shuai fully supported and cooperated with Qian Xuesen and other scientists, both of whom were heroes in the improvement of the level of military science and technology and equipment in New China, and the two also formed a deep friendship.
Soon after Qian Xuesen returned to China, he was elected as a member of the CPPCC National Committee, and at the dinner of the CPPCC National Committee after this lecture, Qian Xuesen was also invited to attend. There was a special detail in the dinner: originally the table number he was at was thirty-seven, which was far from the main table, but the chairman greatly appreciated Qian Xuesen's talent and noble character for the country, so he specially invited him to the main table. Qian Xuesen did not know this situation in advance, and when he arrived at the venue, he found that there was no name on the thirty-seven tables, or the staff temporarily guided him to the main table.
The chairman took Qian Xuesen's hand that night and said happily: I want to sit at a table with you! Your value alone is much greater than that of five divisions! This famous saying was made by the chairman himself to Qian Xuesen at the dinner party on the same day. Elder Qian's contributions to the development of China's military science and technology and equipment are enormous, especially the famous "Qian Xuesen Ballistics," which still affect the research and development and use of our army's advanced weapons. The meritorious Elder Qian died in 2009 at the age of ninety-eight.
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