Qian Xuesen (; December 11, 1911October 31, 2009; also spelled as Tsien Hsue-shen) was a Chinese aerospace engineer and cyberneticist who made significant contributions to the field of aerodynamics and established engineering cybernetics. He achieved recognition as one of America's leading experts in rockets and high-speed flight theory prior to his deportation to China in 1955.

Qian received his undergraduate education in mechanical engineering at National Chiao Tung University in Shanghai in 1934. He traveled to the United States in 1935 and attained a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1936. Afterward, he joined Theodore von Kármán's group at the California Institute of Technology in 1936, received a doctorate in aeronautics and mathematics there in 1939, and became an associate professor at Caltech in 1943. While at Caltech, he co-founded NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was recruited by the United States Department of Defense and the Department of War to serve in various positions, including as an expert consultant with a rank of colonel in 1945. He became an associate professor at MIT in 1946, a full professor at MIT in 1947, and a full professor at Caltech in 1949.

During the Second Red Scare in the 1950s, the United States federal government accused him of communist sympathies. In 1950, despite protests by his colleagues and without any evidence of the allegations, he was stripped of his security clearance. He was given a deferred deportation order by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and for the following five years, he and his family were subjected to partial house arrest and government surveillance in an effort to gradually make his technical knowledge obsolete. he was released in 1955 in exchange for the repatriation of American pilots who had been captured during the Korean War. He left the United States in September 1955 on the American President Lines passenger liner SS President Cleveland, arriving in mainland China via Hong Kong.

Upon his return, he helped lead development of the Dongfeng ballistic missile and the Chinese space program. He also played a significant part in the construction and development of China's defense industry, higher education and research system, rocket force, and a key technology university. For his contributions, he became known as the "Father of Chinese Rocketry" and was nicknamed the "King of Rocketry". He is recognized as one of the founding fathers of Two Bombs, One Satellite.

In 1957, Qian was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He served as a Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1987 to 1998.

He was the cousin of engineer Hsue-Chu Tsien, who was involved in the aerospace industries of both China and the United States. He is a cousin of the father of Roger Y. Tsien, the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Early life and education

Qian was born in the Shanghai International Settlement, with ancestral roots in Lin'an, Hangzhou, in 1911. His parents were Qian Junfu and Zhang Lanjuan. He graduated from the High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University, and attended Shanghai Jiaotong University. There, he received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on railroad administration in 1934. He interned at Nanchang Air Force Base.

After graduating from college, Qian was admitted to the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship program, enabling him to study in the United States. He left China in August 1935, and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a master's program in mechanical engineering. His master's thesis was titled Study of the turbulent boundary layer.

Kármán made his home a social scene for the aerodynamicists of Pasadena, and Qian was drawn in: "Tsien enjoyed visiting my home, and my sister took to him because of his interesting ideas and straightforward manner."

Shortly after arriving at the California Institute of Technology in 1936, Qian became fascinated with the rocketry ideas of Frank Malina, other students of von Kármán, and their associates, including Jack Parsons. Along with his fellow students, he was involved in rocket-related experiments at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech. Around the university, the dangerous and explosive nature of their work earned them the nickname "Suicide Squad". His doctoral dissertation was titled Problems in motion of compressible fluids and reaction propulsion.

Qian and von Kármán developed the Kármán-Tsien (Kármán-Qian) rule for estimating compressibility effects of subsonic flow in the field of fluid mechanics.

Career in the United States

In 1943, Qian and two other members of their rocketry group drafted the first document to use the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In response to the German V-1 cruise missile and V-2 rocket, he and other important US scientists developed a variety of highly effective missiles that were vital in the closing stages of World War II.

Qian's mentor at Caltech, Theodore von Kármán, invited Qian to join the Air Force Scientific Advisory Group in 1945. and "to recruit German scientists for the American missile program".

Von Kármán wrote of Qian, "At the age of 36, he was an undisputed genius whose work was providing an enormous impetus to advances in high-speed aerodynamics and jet propulsion." During this time, he worked on designing an intercontinental space plane, which would later inspire the X-20 Dyna-Soar, a precursor to the American Space Shuttle.

Qian married Jiang Ying, a famed opera singer and the daughter of Jiang Baili and his wife, Japanese nurse Satô Yato. The elder Jiang was a military strategist and adviser to Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek. The Qians were married on September 14, 1947 in Shanghai, and had two children; their son Qian Yonggang (, also known as Yucon Qian) was born in Boston on October 13, 1948, while their daughter Qian Yongzhen () was born in early 1950 when the family was residing in Pasadena, California.

Shortly after his wedding, Qian returned to America to take up a teaching position at MIT. Jiang Ying would join him in December 1947. In 1949, with the recommendation of von Kármán, Qian became a Robert H. Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion at Caltech. He was also appointed the first director of the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Center at Caltech.

<gallery mode=packed heights=200px>

File:Tsien Hsue-shen.jpg|Qian in the early 1940s

File:Qian Xuesen’s “general identification document” and “special identification document”.jpg|Qian's "general identification document" and "special identification document" issued by the US War Department, 1945

File:Left-right Ludwig Prandtl, Theodore Von Karman, Tsien Hsue-sen.jpg|Left to right: Ludwig Prandtl, Qian Xuesen, Theodore von Kármán. Prandtl served Germany during World War II; von Kármán and Qian served the United States; after 1955, Qian served China. Qian's overseas cap displays his temporary United States Army rank of colonel. Prandtl was von Kármán's doctoral adviser; von Kármán, in turn, was Qian's.

File:Hsue-shen Tsien at his deportation hearing.jpg|Qian at his deportation hearing, 1950. Others, from left, are Grant B. Cooper, Xuesen's attorney; a hearing reporter, Albert Del Guercio, examining officer, and Ray Waddell, hearing officer.

</gallery>

Detention

By the early 1940s, U.S. Army Intelligence was already aware of allegations that Qian was a communist, but his security clearance was not suspended until prior to the Korean War. On June 6, 1950, the Army abruptly revoked Qian's security clearance, and he was questioned by the FBI. Despite support from his colleagues and no proof of the allegations, he received a deferred deportation order from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and for the following five years, he and his family were subjected to partial house arrest and government surveillance intended to undermine his technical expertise. Weinbaum's trial commenced on August 30 and both Frank Oppenheimer and Parsons testified against him. Weinbaum was convicted of perjury and sentenced to four years. Qian was taken into custody on September 6, 1950, for questioning the book, stating that it is "difficult to overstate the value of Qian's book to those interested in the overall theory of complex control systems". Evidently, Qian's approach is primarily practical, as Krendel notes that for servomechanisms, the "usual linear design criterion of stability is inadequate and other criteria arising from the physics of the problem must be used." The text was quickly translated into multiple languages and became a foundational text on automation. He was awarded the Pendray Aerospace Literature Award by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 1953.

Return to China

thumb|upright=0.8|Qian and his family aboard SS President Cleveland before its departure from Los Angeles, 1955

Qian became the subject of five years of secret diplomacy and negotiation between the U.S. and China. During this time, he lived under constant surveillance with the permission to teach without any classified research duties. Qian arrived at Hong Kong on October 8, 1955, and entered mainland China via the Kowloon–Canton Railway later that day.

Under Secretary Kimball, who had tried for several years to keep Qian in the U.S., commented on his treatment: "It was the stupidest thing this country ever did. He was no more a communist than I was, and we forced him to go." the Dongfeng ballistic missiles and the Long March space rockets.

Career in China

In 1955, Qian returned to China as part of an agreement for the release of American prisoners in China, and he was welcomed as a hero.

Qian survived both the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957 and the Cultural Revolution by adapting to the shifting political climate in China. In 1960, the operations research group he had established with Xu became part of the operations research lab at the Mathematics Institute of CAS. In 1966, China formally began to develop a missile interceptor system. Additionally, he helped establish the Chinese school of complexity science. His research advanced the discipline of engineering cybernetics, which emphasized the importance of design principles in practical engineering.

From the 1980s onward, Qian had advocated the scientific investigation of traditional Chinese medicine, qigong, and the pseudoscientific concept of "special human body functions". He particularly encouraged scientists to accumulate observational data on qigong so that "future scientific theories could be established".

In Qian's view, China should take a retaliatory nuclear posture as a form of deterrence.

Later life

thumb|'Qian Xuesen.' Poster from the series 'Excellent sons and daughters of China', by Li Huiquan, 1990.

Qian retired in 1991 and lived quietly in Beijing, refusing to speak to Westerners.

Qian was invited to visit the U.S. by the AIAA the normalization of relations between the two countries, but he refused the invitation, having wanted a formal apology for his detention. In a reminiscence published in 2002, Marble stated that he believed Qian had "lost faith in the American government" but that he had "always had very warm feelings for the American people." Despite this, Qian approved the decision of both his children, US citizens by birth, to return to the US to study. That year, China Central Television named Qian as one of the eleven most inspiring people in China.

On October 31, 2009, Qian died at the age of 97 in Beijing from lung illness.

Legacy in China

thumb|, Shanghai Jiaotong University

Qian is remembered for his foundational contributions to cybernetics in China and strategic weapons research. Among the contributions for which he is deemed a national science hero are: his foundational Report on Building China's National Defense Aerospace Industry, his leadership of large national defence weapons projects (rocketry and ICBMS), the development of nuclear missile carriers, and initiating and advising the satellite and manned spaceflight projects.

Wang writes that heroization of Qian was made for several purposes: his "deep engagement in China's national defence programmes", "allegiance to the Party and his well-articulated commitment to state ideology", "rapid emergence of Chinese anti-Americanism", and to create a role model of a "party scientist". Wang writes that in the 1990s, students "claimed to appreciate Qian's scientific accomplishments and the significance of science and technology, taking him as a model and swearing to study hard to be the 'next Qian Xuesen'." and on March 2, 2012, it was released in China. Biopic Qian Xuesen, directed by Zhang Jianya with Chen Kun, Zhang Yuqi and Zhang Tielin in the main roles, was released in 2021. A retrofuturistic science fiction film, Qian Xuesen and the Yangtze River Computer, incorporates documentary footage of Qian to tell a fictional story about the creation of a supercomputer "of and for the masses."

  • 1939: (with Theodore von Kármán) The buckling of thin cylindrical shells under axial compression, Journal of Aeronautical Sciences 7(2):43 to 50.
  • 1943: "Symmetrical Joukowsky Airfoils in shear flow", Quarterly of Applied Mathematics, 1: 130–48.
  • 1943: On the Design of the Contraction Cone for a Wind Tunnel, Journal of Aeronautical Sciences, 10(2): 68–70.
  • 1945: (with Theodore von Kármán), "Lifting- line Theory for a Wing in Nonuniform Flow," Quarterly of Applied Mathematics, 3: 1–11.
  • 1946: "Similarity laws of hypersonic flows", MIT Journal of Mathematics and Physics 25: 247–251, .
  • 1946: "Superaerodynamics, Mechanics of Rarefied Gases", Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 13 (12)
  • 1949: "Rockets and Other Thermal Jets Using Nuclear Energy", in The Science and Engineering of Nuclear Power, Addison-Wesley, Vol. 2.
  • 1950: "Instruction and Research at the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Center", Journal of the American Rocket Society, June 1950
  • 1951: "Optimum Thrust Programming for a Sounding Rocket" (with Robert C. Evans), Journal of the American Rocket Society 21(5)
  • 1952: "The Transfer Functions of Rocket Nozzles", Journal of the American Rocket Society 22(3)
  • 1952: "A Similarity Law for Stressing Rapidly Heated Thin-Walled Cylinders" (with C.M.Cheng), Journal of the American Rocket Society 22(3)
  • 1952: "Automatic Navigation of a Long Range Rocket Vehicle", (with T.D.Adamson and E.L. Knuth) Journal of the American Rocket Society 22(4)
  • 1952: "A Method for Comparing the Performance of Power Plants for Vertical Flight", Journal of the American Rocket Society 22(4)
  • 1952: "Serbo-Stabilization of Combustion in Rocket Motors", Journal of the American Rocket Society 22(5)
  • 1953: "Physical Mechanics, a New Field in Engineering Science", Journal of the American Rocket Society 23(1)
  • 1953: "The Properties of Pure Liquids", Journal of the American Rocket Society 23(1)
  • 1953: "Take-Off from Satellite Orbit", Journal of the American Rocket Society 23(4)
  • 1956: "The Poincaré-Lighthill-Kuo Method", Advances in Applied Mechanics 4: 281–349, .
  • 1958: "The equations of gas dynamics", in Fundamentals of Gas Dynamics v. 3, Princeton University Press, .

Monographs

  • 1954:
  • 1957:
  • 2007:

Biographies

  • Thread of the Silkworm (1996) by Iris Chang

See also

  • Chien-Shiung Wu
  • Ye Qisun
  • Guo Yonghuai
  • Hsue-Chu Tsien
  • People's Liberation Army Rocket Force
  • Chinese space program
  • China and weapons of mass destruction
  • Project 596
  • Test No. 6
  • China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (formerly known as the Fifth Academy of the Ministry of Defense)

References

Citations

Works cited

  • O'Donnell, Franklin (2002). JPL 101 . California Institute of Technology. JPL 400–1048.
  • China, Encyclopedia Astronautica
  • CNN.com timeline of China space program