Leonardo Honorary Editor Joseph Needham

OBITUARY Leonardo Honorary Editor Joseph Needham Leonardo Honorary EditorJoseph Needham died recently in England. Needham was a founding editor of Leonardo; in fact, it was he who suggested the name "Leonardo" for a journal that sought to give primacy to the artist's voice-for the artist as researcher in an interdisciplinary world where art, science and technology should be interwoven threads of a single cultural fabric. Needham is probably best known for his magnum opus Science and Civilization in Chinaa multivolume work that brings together through historical research and comprehensive analysis the development of Chinese mathematics, physics, geography, astronomy, chemistry , biology, agriculture, medicine-indeed, all the threads that contributed to Chinese civilization. Needham was originally a biochemist and worked on the biochemistry of embryonic development . His 1931 work Chemical Embryology surveyed morphogenetic changes, concluding that such changes were chemically controlled and that the complex changes during development can only be derived through an understanding of structural chemistry. In 1942 he was invited to head the British Scientific Mission to China where he spent 4 years traveling and visiting researchers. In 1946 he became head of the Department of Natural Sciences at UNESCO in Paris. He was elected Master of Caius College in Cambridge , England in 1966. He received the Einstein Gold Medal of UNESCO and China's Order of the Brilliant Star. Needham was a passionate man of wide learning. The Daily Telegraph obituary lists several publications of his that indicate this: "Celestial Lancets, A History and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa," "Molly Dancing in East Anglia," "Korean Astronomical Instruments and Clocks," "The Sceptical Biologist," and "Order and Life." Needham was a friend and supporter of Leonardo and a giant in the history of intellectual development of the twentieth century. ...