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发表于 2009-11-5 17:09:13
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Qian Xuesen, Father of China’s Space Program, Is Dead at 98
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/asia/04qian.html
Qian Xuesen, Father of China’s Space Program, Is Dead at 98
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: November 3, 2009
BEIJING — Qian Xuesen, a brilliant rocket scientist who single-handedly l
ed China’s space and military rocketry efforts after he was drummed out o
f the United States during the redbaiting of the McCarthy era, died on Sat
urday in Beijing. He was 98 years old.
China’s state media reported the death. Mr. Qian had been frail and bedri
dden in recent years.
In China, Mr. Qian was celebrated as the father of Chinese rocketry, the l
eader of the research that produced the nation’s first ballistic missiles
, its first satellite and the Silkworm anti-ship missile.
But in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, he was no less valuable,
if not so publicly celebrated, as a pioneer in American jet and rocket tec
hnology.
As a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and later as a
scientist and teacher at the California Institute of Technology, Mr. Qian,
also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, played a central role in early United Stat
es efforts to exploit jet and rocket propulsion.
As a graduate assistant at Caltech in the late 1930s, Mr. Qian helped cond
uct seminal research into rocket propulsion, and in the 1940s he helped fo
und the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, now one of NASA’s premier space-explor
ation centers.
Mr. Qian served on the United States government’s Science Advisory Board
during World War II and, on the war front in Germany, advised the Army on
ballistic-missile guidance technology. At the war’s end, holding the temp
orary rank of lieutenant colonel, he debriefed Nazi scientists, including
Werner von Braun, and was sent to analyze Hitler’s V-2 rocket facilities.
In the 1940s his mentor and colleague, the Caltech physicist Theodore von
Karman, called Mr. Qian “an undisputed genius whose work was providing an
enormous impetus to advances in high-speed aerodynamics and jet propulsio
n.” In 1949, he penned a proposal for a winged space plane that the magaz
ine Aviation Week and Space Technology, in 2007, called an inspiration for
research that led to NASA’s space shuttle.
But by 1950 Mr. Qian’s American career was over. Shortly after applying f
or permission to visit his parents in the newly Communist China, he was st
ripped of his security clearance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation an
d accused of secretly being a Communist. The charge was based on a 1938 Un
ited States Communist Party document that showed he had attended a social
gathering that the F.B.I. suspected was a meeting of the Pasadena Communis
t Party.
Mr. Qian denied the charges, his Caltech colleagues rushed to his defense,
and the university hired a lawyer to assist him. Mr. Qian first sought to
return to China, but was placed under virtual house arrest by the governm
ent; later, he sought to stay and fight the accusations, but the governmen
t sought to deport him.
In 1955, Mr. Qian was sent back to China, where he was proclaimed a hero a
nd immediately put at work developing Chinese rocketry. By many accounts,
he later became a committed Communist and served on the party’s ruling bo
dy, the Central Committee.
The loyalty allegations have never been fully resolved. Aviation Week, whi
ch named Mr. Qian its man of the year in 2007, quoted Dan Kimball, a forme
r under secretary of the Navy, as calling Mr. Qian’s deportation “the st
upidest thing this country ever did.” A 1999 United States Congress repor
t on Chinese espionage called Mr. Qian a spy, but critics say the report p
rovides no basis other than a claim that he passed to China the secrets of
the American Titan missile program, which began years after he had been d
eported.
Qian Xuesen was born in 1911, as the Chinese imperial government was colla
psing, in Hangzhou, in eastern China. He earned a mechanical engineering d
egree in 1934 in Shanghai. At age 23, he went to the United States on a sc
holarship to study aeronautical engineering at M.I.T. Later, at Caltech’s
Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, Mr. Qian met Mr. von Karman, who reco
mmended him for the Science Advisory Board and gave him the lead role in r
esearch that developed the first American solid-fuel rocket to be successf
ully launched.
After his deportation, Mr. Qian wrote a position paper for Chinese leaders
on aviation and defense, according to the state-run news service Xinhua.
Under his leadership, China developed its first generation of “Long March
” missiles and, in 1970, launched its first satellite. Most of China’s r
ecent space achievements, such as its manned space program, began long aft
er Mr. Qian’s retirement.
Mr. Qian never returned to the United States, but in a 2002 reminiscence,
a Caltech colleague and professor, Frank Marble, stated that he believed M
r. Qian “lost faith in the American government, but I believe he has alwa
ys had very warm feelings for the American people.”
Caltech gave Mr. Qian its distinguished alumni award in 2001. |
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