Qian Xuesen

Qian Xuesen a Chinese aerodynamicist and engineer (1911-2009) who helped to found the jet propulsion laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and later, after his deportation from the United States, became the guiding figure of China's missile, rocket and space programmes, earning the name father of Chinese rocketry.

Early Life and Education

Qian Xuesen was born on 11 December 1911 in Shanghai and grew up in Beijing, the son of a family of scholarly and official background. He was educated at the Beijing Normal University high school and then studied railway engineering at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, graduating in 1934.

In 1935 he travelled to the United States on a scholarship and studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to the California Institute of Technology, where he came under the influence of the aerodynamicist Theodore von Karman. He received his doctorate in 1939 with work on compressible flow and boundary layers.

He stayed in the United States through the war years and became a leading figure in American aeronautics. He was one of the founders, in 1943, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and he worked on the design of jet and rocket propulsion, on high-speed aerodynamics and on the mathematical theory of flight, publishing work that influenced both aircraft and missile design.

Career in the United States

Qian Xuesen helped to found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the institution that later became the centre of American planetary exploration, and he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the United States Air Force. He was granted a security clearance and worked on classified projects during and after the Second World War.

In 1949, when the People's Republic was established, he resigned a teaching post in Boston, intending to return to China. The political atmosphere of the period and the onset of the conflict in Korea led the American authorities to treat him with suspicion, and in 1950 his security clearance was withdrawn and he was accused of communist sympathies.

He was detained and then placed under house arrest, and for five years he was prevented from leaving the country. In 1955, as part of an agreement that returned detained personnel, he was allowed to depart, and he sailed for China by way of Hong Kong. The episode remained a source of bitterness and of lasting significance in his life.

Founding Chinese Rocketry

On his return Qian Xuesen was received as a national asset and was appointed to lead the new missile and rocket research programme. He directed the Fifth Academy of the Ministry of Defence, the organisation that became the foundation of the Chinese space and strategic-missile effort, and he set out a long-term plan for the development of ballistic missiles and launch vehicles.

He oversaw the development of the first Chinese ballistic missiles, based on early rocket designs and then on indigenous work, and he laid the theoretical and institutional foundation for the country's rocket and satellite programmes. China's first satellite, Dongfanghong 1, was launched in 1970 on a rocket whose development he had inspired.

He also wrote extensively on engineering cybernetics, on systems engineering and on scientific organisation, and he developed a philosophy of how large technical enterprises should be managed. His view that a nation's strength rests on the systematic mastery of technology shaped policy far beyond the missile programme.

Influence and Later Life

Qian Xuesen became one of the most senior scientific figures of the People's Republic, holding awards and honours and directing important research bodies. For its part, the United States regarded his return as one of the most consequential losses of the era, since the knowledge he carried helped to accelerate the Chinese missile and space programmes.

He was honoured as the founder of Chinese rocketry, and a national science and technology award was named after him. His biography became, in China, an emblem of the scientist who brings his learning home to serve the country, and he was celebrated in schools and museums as a figure of extraordinary ability and loyalty.

He lived in retirement in Beijing in his last decades and died there on 31 October 2009 at the age of ninety-seven. His reputation as the leading architect of the Chinese missile and space effort endured, and his career remained a subject of study both for its technical contributions and for the political history in which it was entangled.

Legacy

Qian Xuesen stands at the beginning of the Chinese missile and space programme, and the institutions, methods and doctrines he established shaped everything that followed. The Long March rockets, the satellite programmes and the manned spaceflight effort all grew from the base he helped to construct.

His writings on systems engineering and on the organisation of research influenced the management of large technical projects in China and the training of a generation of engineers. He argued that the integration of many specialised skills into a coherent whole is itself a science, and he helped to make that idea a principle of Chinese industrial and defence planning.

The arc of his life, from a privileged student in Shanghai to a celebrated researcher in America to a founding figure of Chinese strategic technology, made him one of the most consequential scientists of the twentieth century. He is remembered in China as the father of its rocketry and abroad as a reminder of the cost of suspicion and exclusion in science.

See also

• Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Chinese space program
• Dongfanghong 1
• Theodore von Karman