Zhu Kezhen Quanji ed. by Hongye Fan et al. (review)

The recent publication of the twenty-four-volume Zhu Kezhen Quanji(hereafter ZKZQJ) is a historians' dream come true and a milestone for the historical studies of science and society in modern China. The massive set not only makes Zhu Kezhen 竺可桢 (Coching Chu 1890–1974) one of the best documented of all Chinese scientists but also provides a gold mine of primary sources on the broader history of Chinese science, education, and politics at a scale and with details unsurpassed in the modern era, with potential relevance for many disciplines in the social and natural sciences.

Zhu Kezhen is best known as a pioneering meteorologist who occupied important positions in Chinese science and education during his long and distinguished career (Wang 2002, 2007). He was also a trailblazer in the historical studies of science and technology in China after whom some of the major awards in the field are named (Liu 2010). ¹Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, amidst rapid social changes in the late Qing, Zhu was among the first generation of Chinese to receive a Western-style education before going to the United States in 1910 and enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1911 to study agriculture as one of the Boxer Rebellion indemnity fellows. He shifted to meteorology when enrolling as a graduate student at Harvard in 1913 and received his PhD in 1918 with a thesis on typhoons in the Far East (he also attended lectures on the history of science by one of its founders George Sarton, at Harvard). He returned to China immediately after graduation to teach and start departments of meteorology and geography at several universities there, including the leading Dongnan daxue 东南大学 (Southeast University) in Nanjing in the 1920s. He also became a leader of the Science Society of China, which he had joined while still in the United States and which would become the most influential organization of Chinese scientists in the Republican period. In 1928 he became the founding director of the Institute of Meteorology 气象研究所 in the new Nationalist government's Academia Sinica 中央研究院 in Nanjing. Then in 1936 he was persuaded by the Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshi 蒋介石 (Chiang Kai-shek) to become president of Zhejiang daxue 浙江大学 (Zhejiang University or Zheda) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, home province for both men, while continuing to direct the Institute of Meteorology for another decade.

Zhu's presidency at Zheda ended up encompassing the difficult years of both the War of Resistance against the Japanese invasion in 1937–45 and the civil war between the Nationalists under Jiang and the Communists under Mao Zedong 毛泽东 in 1945– 49. Under his devoted and principled leadership (crystallized in the "truth-seeking" motto he chose for the university), Zheda actually flourished in this period and emerged as a leading university in China, especially in the sciences and engineering. Such achievements came at great personal costs: his second son, Heng Zhu 竺衡, and wife, Xiahun Zhang 张侠魂, died tragically from illnesses while he led the university inland to evade Japanese military forces in 1938, and he barely had time to carry out his own meteorological research.

In 1949, as the Communists won the civil war, Zhu decided to stay in mainland China instead of moving with the retreating Nationalists to Taiwan. He was soon appointed a vice president of the newly established Chinese Academy of Sciences 中国科学院 (CAS). In this position he played a key part in the CAS's initial organization during the early 1950s and then in managing its various programs in earth and life sciences, including natural resources surveys. He also participated in China's national science and technology policy making. At heart a liberal and patriot, Zhu struggled in the new political environment as he tried to balance his advocacy for basic research and international scientific collaboration with efforts to make the CAS serve more immediate and practical national needs. Placed on a list of protected people by Premier Zhou Enlai 周恩来, Zhu...