Chien Wei-zang

Chien Wei-zang, also known as Qian Weichang, was a Chinese physicist and mathematician who was one of the earliest modern Chinese physicists and contributed to the study of physics, mathematics, mechanics, and geology. He was also a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a founding member of the Academia Sinica. Chien was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China, in 1913. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1935 and obtained his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1942 under the supervision of John Lighton Synge. He then worked as a research associate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Caltech. He returned to China in 1946 and taught at various universities, such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and National Central University. He was a pioneer in the field of physics, mathematics, mechanics, and geology, and developed many innovative theories and methods. He invented the Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization system, which indicated the tones of Mandarin Chinese without using diacritics or numbers. He also devised the Chien tone letters, which are widely used to represent the tones of various languages. He wrote the joint work with J. L. Synge on the intrinsic theory of plates and shells, which is considered as a classical work in solid mechanics. He also created the successive approximation method of treating large deflection problems, which is now named as Chien's method. He also participated in the excavation and research of the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian, which was a major discovery of human evolution. He received many honors and awards, such as the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award, the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize, and the Charles Darwin Award. He was a citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States, and a permanent resident of Hong Kong. He died in 1988 at the age of 74 and was honored as a pioneer, a visionary, and an inspiration to many.