Qian Xuesen

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Qian Xuesen bigraphy, stories - Chinese rocket scientist

Qian Xuesen : biography

11 December 1911 – 31 October 2009

Qian Xuesen () (11 December 1911 – 31 October 2009) was a scientist who made important contributions to the missile and space programs of both the United States and People’s Republic of China. The name he used in English was Hsue-Shen Tsien or H.S. Tsien.

During the 1940s Qian was one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. During the Second Red Scare of the 1950s, the United States government accused Qian of having communist sympathies, and he was stripped of his security clearancePerrett, B. (January 7, 2008), Sea Change, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Vol. 168, No. 1, p.57-61. in 1950. Qian then decided to return to China, but instead was detained at Terminal Island near Los Angeles. After spending 5 years under virtual house arrest, Qian was released in 1955, in exchange for the repatriation of American pilots captured during the Korean War. Notified by U.S. authorities that he was free to go, Qian immediately arranged his departure, leaving for China in September 1955, on the passenger liner SS President Cleveland of American President Lines, via Hong Kong. He returned to lead the Chinese rocket program, and became known as the "Father of Chinese Rocketry" (or "King of Rocketry"). ,人民网,2009年10月31日.Accessed Oct. 31, 2009; .网易探索(广州)(2009年10月31日). Accessed Nov. 11, 2009.

He is also the cousin of the mechanical engineer Hsue-Chu Tsien and his son (first cousin once removed) is the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry winner Roger Y. Tsien. Asteroid 3763 Qianxuesen and the ill-fated space ship Tsien in the science fiction novel 2010: Odyssey Two are named after him.

Later life

In his later years, since the 1980s, Qian advocated scientific investigation of traditional Chinese medicine, Qigong and "special human body functions". Some people claim that Qian actually did not spend his effort on qigong, but that he just expressed that people should consider the widely practiced qigong in a scientific manner. He particularly encouraged scientists to accumulate observational data on qigong for the establishment of future theories.四川教育出版社出版

From the early 1980s he studied in a number of areas, and created systematics, contributed on science and technology system and somatic science, philosophy, natural sciences, engineering science, literature and art, military science, systems science, geography science, social science, and education.

Advanced the concepts, theory and method on system science: open complex giant system, from qualitative to quantitative integration of Hall for Workshop of comprehensive and integrated system,钱学森:创建系统学(新世纪版),上海交通大学出版社钱学森:论系统工程(新世纪版),上海交通大学出版社 and opened up a Chinese school of the Science of Complexity. Organizated scientific seminars and train successors.

In 2008, he was named Aviation Week and Space Technology Person of the Year. This selection is not intended as an honour but is given to the person judged to have the greatest impact on aviation in the past year.Hold Your Fire, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Vol. 168., No. 1, January 7, 2008, p. 8.

In 2008, China Central Television named Qian as one of the eleven most inspiring people in China.Person of the Year, Aviation Week and Space Technology, Vol. 168., No. 12, March 24, 2008, p. 22 He died at the age of 97 on October 31, 2009 in Beijing.

In July 2009, the Omega Alpha Association named Qian (H. S. Tsien) one of four Honorary Members in the international systems engineering honor society.http://www.omegalpha.org/honorary members/html

A Chinese film production 钱学森 预告片 (陈坤主演) Qian Xue Sen directed by Zhang Jianya stars Zhang Tielin as Qian Xue to be release on 11 December 2011 in both Asia and North America.

Career in the United States

In 1943, Qian and two others in the Caltech rocketry group drafted the first document to use the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory; it was a proposal to the Army for developing missiles in response to Germany’s V-2 rocket. This led to the Private A, which flew in 1944, and later the Corporal, the WAC Corporal, and other designs.