It turned out that Ming Chen Wang has a Chinese name, 王明贞, who was a little-known physics professor at Tsinghua University since 1955 in Beijing, China. Except for 7 years in prison apparently due to her husband's connection to Jiang Qing, one of the Gang of Four and Chairman Mao's wife during 1966-1973, she taught physics to China's students, just like many other teachers, and until 2010 when she died at the age of 104.
The only English account I can find of her is here: https://sites.google.com/site/kaizhangstatmech/chinese-scientists/mcwang. She was one of the pioneers in women in sciences, and it took her a lot of efforts to obtain an opportunity to go to college and years of work in order to go to abroad for further study. Her PhD was obtained in 1942 (at the age of 36) in physics at the University of Michigan, with a thesis: A Study of Various Solutions of the Boltzmann Equation. Her employement history was a little strange, she worked at MIT as a research scientist for a few years, then she went back to China, worked as a professor at Yunnan University till 1949. Then, suddenly, right before China was liberated, she went back to US to work at the University of Notre Dam for a few years until 1953, when she decided to go back to China again. She succeded in 1955 to return to China. My guess is that, as a woman, she needed to follow her husband in her moves and also in consideration of her other relatives such as her brother, who was more famous as a physicist and later as a goverment official at the same time in the US. But for her career, too many moves may not be too good. On the other hand, after arriving at Tsinghua University in 1955, due to New China's in education and everything at the beginning of developments, and influences from the Russia, she did not continue her research career at all and she devoted all her time to education. (Actually she was able to teach from 1955-1966, and due to imprisonment from 1966-1973, she did not resume her academic work and retired in 1976, see ref.1.) In recent years she finally got some well-deserved recognition from her university and colleagues, and she was bestowed with some high honors, even being called China's Madam Currie (which may be a little exaggerated), and maybe China or Tsinghua U. has finally realized what they have missed over these many chaotic years after all!
Reference: see also, 1. 王明贞：转瞬九十载, 物理,
2. 布朗运动理论一百年
郝柏林, 2011, 物理,
40卷, 第一期
My grandma is a very talented physicist indeed. However, what makes her shine even brighter is her humbleness in front of science and humanity. She had a great life, which a lot of people don't understand since they themselves are so much after fame and money. For her, science lies side by side with peace, which in turn inspires wisdom. She actually never enjoyed all these titles others offered her in good intention. One thing she truly enjoyed was the moment when she figured out a solution to an equation that had bothered her for weeks. Another moment she loved was figuring out how to make perfect creamy coffee ice cream without an ice cream machine. You probably can not imagine that she was also a highly skilled tailor making all the dresses herself, a fantastic cook entertaining 30-40 guests with four or five courses of all home made dishes from appetizer to desserts, an extremely artistic artisan who hand made all her leather purses with carved flowers and sophisticated pattern. On top of all these, she is a shy lady with few words yet a charming and elegant style that you won't often see on modern women any more. Her pass-away is a pass-away of a generation - a generation full of talent and grace. Not to be pessimistic, I doubt, after Culture Revolution, China will ever have new generations like this one: neither talent wise nor grace wise. They are gone and forever gone.
ReplyDeleteThank you for providing the life side of M C Wang. That's a very interesting perspective. Also interesting is that generation of women who grew up during the youth of Republic of China: good education in both Chinese classic culture and modern science when studying abroad. When they went back, they brought back modern science as well as their grace and class that only their generation possessed.
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