Editor's note: Hao Hao crossed the ocean, fist to the country, learned the sea towering to illuminate the road ahead, and eventually became a generation of philosophers; diligently seeking physics, gushing apricot altar, three thousand disciples under the door, the light of science shines in China. He is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an important founder of China's optical research and optical instrument industry Yan Keats, born on January 23, 1901 in Dongyang, Zhejiang, today is the 120th anniversary of his birth, with this article, to commemorate Mr. Yan.
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On October 12, 1923, the French cruise ship "Gauldière" departed from Shanghai for France. On the evening of October 22, the cruise ship sailed near Singapore, it was the thirteenth day of september in the lunar calendar, perhaps the moon on the sea triggered the reverie of tourists, a 22-year-old Chinese youth in the cabin sent a letter to his fiancée (engaged) who was studying at Southeast University, writing a vernacular poem, the last sentence was "My heart is like a boat in the water". On the one hand, he expressed his feelings of longing, and on the other hand, he expressed his firm ambition to study in France. This young man was Yan Keats, who later became one of the pioneers of modern physics in China and one of the founders of China's applied optics and optical instrument industry.
Four years later, in June 1927, Yan Keats completed his doctoral dissertation "Experimental Study on the Deformation and Optical Properties of Quartz under electric field" at the University of Paris, and successfully passed the defense. He became the first Chinese to receive a National Doctor of Science degree from France. The paper, completed under the direction of Professor Charles Fabry of the University of Paris, originated in the crystal piezoelectric effect discovered by the brothers Pierre Curie and Jacques curie in France, and was the first experimental determination of the crystal piezoelectric effect inverse phenomenon (the deformation of quartz crystals caused by electric currents). As recently as 1927, Professor Fabry was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences, and he greatly appreciated Yan Keats's paper, so he personally read it at the meeting of academicians of the Academy of Sciences where he made his debut. A number of newspapers in Paris simultaneously published photos of the teachers and students, which were spread as beautiful talks.
Figure 1 Yan Keats (second from right) and tutor Professor Fabry (second from left) in the laboratory (picture from Hu Shenghua Science Network blog post "Acquisition of French edp Science Press Caprice", WEBSITE: http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-980214-1187367.html)
In July of the same year, Yan Keats returned to his homeland by boat from Marseille, France. After passing through Singapore, one day on the deck, he suddenly heard someone calling his name, and it was a Chinese. Yan Keats looked surprised, and after greeting, he learned that his name was Xu Beihong, who had just finished observing art in European countries and transferred from Singapore to board a ship to return to China. Yan Keats asked how to know his name, it turned out that not long ago Xu Beihong saw Yan Keats's deeds and photos in the "Paris Morning Post" and remembered it deeply. Xu Beihong thought that Yan Keats would have a bright future when he returned to China, so he sketched a portrait of him on the ship and inscribed a line in small characters in French: To my dear friend, Yan Keats, the light of science.
Fig. 2 Portrait of Yan Keats by Xu Beihong (Image from Reference 3)
The light of science
Xu Beihong's encouragement of the "light of science" to Yan Keats could not be more appropriate. When Yan Keats was studying at Dongyang Middle School, the English teacher Donghua borrowed the ancient allusions of "chiseling the wall to borrow light" and "fluorescent sac reflecting snow" for him to take the word "Mu Guang". He was "admiring the light" all his life, and later made great contributions to the application of optics and optical instruments, which was completely worthy of the encouragement of the "light of science" at that time.
After returning to China, Yan Keats also served as a professor of physics and mathematics at four universities: Datong University in Shanghai, China Public School, Jinan University and Fourth Sun Yat-sen University in Nanjing. He travels back and forth between Shanghai and Nanjing, with classes of up to 27 hours a week, sometimes up to 7 hours a day.
On November 11, 1927, Yan Keats married Zhang Zongying in Nanjing. In the summer of 1928, Yan Keats won the first prize in the first class research grant of the China Education and Culture Foundation. At the beginning of the second year, he and his wife went to France, where he worked in research at the Fabry Laboratory of the University of Paris and the Large Electromagnet Laboratory of the French Academy of Sciences, during which he had several contacts with Marie Curie and received her support for radiological research in China. At the end of 1930, Mr. and Mrs. Yan Keats returned to Beiping via Siberia with their second son, Yan Shuangguang, who was born in Paris (their children are all named after the word "light"). It was in Beiping that he ushered in the golden hour of his scientific research career.
At the beginning of 1931, Li Shi, president of the National Peking Research Institute, hired Yan Keats as a full-time researcher and director (director) of the Institute of Physics, and at the same time asked him to prepare for the Institute of Radium Studies. At that time, Yan Keats was 30 years old, he was rich and powerful, plus he was eager to serve the country scientifically, taking the institute as his home and leading soldier, often using evenings and weekends to work in the institute, and within a few years, the talents of the two institutes were gathered and famous. Young people who were recruited by him to the institute, such as Zhong Shengbiao, Qian Linzhao, Lu Xueshan, Qian Sanqiang, Wu Xuelin, Yang Chengzong, etc., later became well-known figures in the history of modern Chinese science.
Figure 3 Group photo of colleagues at the Institute of Physics of The Beiping Research Institute in 1931
(Yan Keats, second from the left, Li Shuhua from the left, Rao Yutai from the right, and Wu Xuelin from the right; Qian Linzhao from the left, Lu Xueshan from the second from the right, and Zhong Shengbiao on the right in the back row, picture from "Qian Linzhao, Qian Lingxi Memorial Anthology", Science Press, 2016)
In 1932, Yan Keats and Qian Linzhao co-authored the paper "The Effect of Pressure Control Photo Sensitivity" in volume 194 of the French Academy of Sciences Weekly. This is the first time that the journal has published the scientific research results achieved by Chinese scientists in China. From 1932 until the outbreak of the All-Out War of Resistance, Yan Keats collaborated with others on 41 papers, accounting for 77% of all 53 papers before 1938. It can be seen that in the 6 years since the establishment of the institute, it is the heyday of Yan Keats's scientific research. Not only for him personally, but also for the Institute of Physics, according to a report by Yan Keats on the institute at the end of 1949, when the institute was about 20 years old, more than 80 papers were published before the outbreak of the War of Resistance, accounting for more than 70% of the total number of papers published in 20 years.
After the July 7 Incident, the Beiping Research Institute was forced to move south. After several trips, the Institute of Physics was relocated in the second half of 1938 to the Longquan Temple in Heilongtan, a northern suburb of Kunming. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Shenzhou was destroyed, and most of the scientific fire was maintained in the southwest. The small Longquan Temple gathered two scientific research institutions presided over by People from Dongyang, Zhejiang, one was the Yunnan Institute of Agriculture, Forestry and Botany (the predecessor of the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) presided over by Cai Xitao, and the other was the Institute of Physics of the Beiping Research Institute led by Yan Keats.
In the face of national difficulties, the Institute of Physics turned to applied research to serve the needs of the War of Resistance, mainly carrying out three tasks: manufacturing crystal oscillators, applied optics and physical prospecting. When the optical instrument production task is urgent, they also recruit and train apprentices, and Yan Keats personally guides and demonstrates the grinding of glass and lens. He later recalled:
In a few years, we have built five hundred fifteen-hundred-fold microscopes for medical and scientific teaching needs; more than a thousand crystal oscillators for the stabilization of the frequency of wireless telegraphs; and more than three hundred sets of military pentagonal rangefinders and telescopes for use by our anti-war forces and the Allied British army in India. This is the first batch of optical instruments manufactured by china, which were previously imported. More importantly, we have thus cultivated a number of backbones of optical instruments and precision instrument manufacturing. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, these people went to the northeast, Xi'an, and Shanghai, and more than a dozen people went to Beijing and other places to run optical research institutes, and they were all backbones.
Qian Linzhao later recalled:
Under the leadership of Mr. Yan, all the staff of our institute worked together to grind lenses, measure focal lengths, carefully inspect, and assemble carefully. Looking back on that year, although I was still bitter, I couldn't help but once again miss Mr. Yan Keats's sincerity to science and his infinite love for the motherland.
Joseph Needham, director of the wartime "Sino-British Science Cooperation Museum" and later a well-known expert in the history of science, visited the Black Dragon Pond Institute of Physics in the spring of 1943 and met with Qian Linzhao, and the two talked happily. Needham writes:
The institute here, under the leadership of Dr. Yan Keats and Dr. Qian Linzhao, turned almost entirely to war production, and a very important factory was established to grind microscopes, telescopes, and other lenses.
It is precisely because of the outstanding work of Yan Keats who led the Institute of Physics during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression that in 1943 the Central Committee of the Cultural Movement of the National Government awarded him an award: "Mr. Zha Yan Keats's invention of the new method of grinding crystals has made great contributions to national defense science. In 1946, Yan Keats was awarded the Third Class "Jingxing Medal" by the Nationalist Government for his contributions to the War of Resistance.
Thinking for the country
In March 1948, Yan Keats was elected as the first academician of the Academia Sinica (7 in physics). Soon the victory of new China was in sight, and Yan Keats wanted to take advantage of the rare peacetime period to continue his research work. Unexpectedly, Guo Moruo personally came to the door and asked him to "go out of the mountain."
It turned out that in March 1949, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China had considered establishing a unified Academy of Sciences as the highest scientific institution in the country after the national victory, and Guo Moruo was in charge. In September, the "Draft for the Establishment of the People's Academy of Sciences" was drafted, preparing to reorganize the then Academia Sinica and the Peking Research Institute to establish a new "People's Academy of Sciences". This is also the prototype of the later Chinese Academy of Sciences. In mid-September, Guo Moruo met with Yan Keats at the Institute of Physics of the Peking Research Institute and hoped that he would participate in the organization and leadership of the upcoming Academy of Sciences. Yan Keats hesitated, because he knew that once the researchers left the laboratory, the scientific career would also end. Who thought Guo Moruo's words dispelled his concerns, "Your words are right. But if our work can get thousands of people into the lab, wouldn't it be a greater good thing! In this way, Yan Keats began the journey of thinking for the country in the second half of his life.
On November 1, 1949, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was formally established, and Yan Keats served as the director of the General Office of the Academy. In May 1950, he was appointed director of the newly established Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In July 1952, the Government Council of the Central People's Government appointed Yan Keats as the president of the Northeast Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He left his relatives in Beijing and went to the northeast alone to open up Caolai, and did not return to Beijing until the abolition of the Northeast Branch in 1954. In June 1955, Yan Keats was elected as a member (academician) of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the director of the Department of Technical Sciences.
In 1958, the Chinese Academy of Sciences decided to establish the University of Science and Technology of China. Yan Keats was not only one of the nine members of the preparatory committee, but also personally taught and re-took the podium after the establishment of the school, 31 years after he first taught in Nanjing and Shanghai. He teaches general physics and electrodynamics courses at the University of Science and Technology of China, 3 times a week, 2 hours at a time, and one lecture is 6 years. There was a student named Duan Ziyi, who was personally popular with Yan Keats at that time, and later recalled:
In the year of the flower armor, the lecture was full of vigor, the voice was loud, the board book was vigorous and pleasing to the eye, sitting in the back row, he could hear it clearly and could see clearly. ...... The students all said that listening to Mr. Yan's class was more comfortable than going to the restaurant.
The following picture is the handout manuscript of Yan Keats' lecture at the University of Science and Technology of China, from which we can imagine the grand scene of Mr. Yan Keats' teaching in that year. In 1980, when he was the president of the University of Science and Technology of China, he published an article in People's Education entitled "Reading, Teaching, Writing, and Doing Research Work". The article uses vivid and vivid metaphors to illustrate the difference between writing a book and teaching, and concludes that "writing a book is similar to writing a novel, and teaching is similar to acting." ”
Figure 4 Handout manuscript of Yan Keats lecturing on thermodynamics at the University of Science and Technology of China (Image from Selected Archives of Manuscripts of Famous Chinese Scientists, Guangdong Education Publishing House, 2019)
In his later years, Yan Keats promoted a far-reaching scientific and educational career, which was cuspea (Sino-US Joint Recruitment of Physics Graduate Program) initiated by Li Zhengdao. The project was originally proposed by Lee Jeong-do in 1979 with the support of Yan Keats and Zhou Peiyuan. In May 1980, the Ministry of Education and the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly issued the "Notice on Recommending Students to Participate in the Postgraduate Examination in the United States", marking the official launch of the project. Immediately, a recruitment committee composed of 25 scientists, including Yan Keats, Zhou Peiyuan and Wang Zhuxi, was set up, with Yan Keats as the director. Cuspea has been implemented for a total of ten years, and 915 students have been recruited to study in the United States before and after, which has become an effective way for China to cultivate talents in a special historical period, which is of great historical significance.
Figure 5 In January 1980, Yan Keats (second from left) with Zhao Zhongyao (first from left), Li Zhengdao (second from right) and Zhang Wenyu at the Institute of High Energy (image from the Internet)
epilogue
After Marie Curie's death in 1934, Yan Keats published a commemorative article in the journal Science, "Mourning Marie Curie", which ended with the following:
Her important discovery is that the great personality, which never goes with its form, is a model that will remain on earth forever. In the trend of popularity and romantic elegance in our country, the average young man and woman, day and night, pay attention to aviation lottery tickets, worship movie stars, and also shock Marie Curie's personality, from then on buried in hard work, vigorously scientific, in order to save my ancient country that is in danger, and liberate the suffering of mankind!
Mr. Yan Keats's sigh and call has passed 87 years, science is far more prosperous, and society has been renewed, but his sincere affection for young people's admiration and pursuit of science, as well as his lifelong pursuit of science "like a boat" spirit, are still in front of him. Immerse yourself in hard work and vigorous science – this is the best commemoration of the 120th anniversary of his birth.
bibliography:
1. The Words of the Century Old Man: Yan Keats Volume (Interviewer: Jin Tao), Liaoning Education Publishing House, 1999
2. Selected Writings of Yan Keats, Shanghai Education Publishing House, 2000
3. Edited by the Cultural and Historical Committee of the Dongyang Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference: Selected Materials of Dongyang Literature and History: Yan Keats Album, 1998
4. "Yan Keats Science and Technology Speech Collection", Shanghai Education Publishing House, 1990
5. "Yan Keats: French Love Letters - Loving the Country, Loving the Family, Loving the People's Love", Pladong People's Liberation Army Publishing House, 2002
6. Ma Xinsheng: Yan Keats, Guizhou People's Publishing House, 2005
Source: Institute of the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences