Qian Sanqiang

Qian Sanqiang a Chinese nuclear physicist (1913-1992) who was a leading founder of the Chinese nuclear weapons programme and the director of the institute that developed the country's first atomic bomb, earning recognition as a principal organiser of the effort that made China a nuclear power.

Early Life and Education

Qian Sanqiang was born on 16 October 1913 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, into a scholarly family. He was educated at a modern school and then studied physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he graduated in 1936 among the ablest students of his year, with a particular interest in the new physics of the atom that was transforming science.

In 1937 he went to France with a fellowship and joined the laboratory of Marie Curie at the Radium Institute in Paris, and later the College de France, where he worked under Frederic Joliot and Irene Curie. He spent more than a decade there and earned a doctoral degree for research on the fission of uranium under neutron bombardment.

Working with a small team he made important contributions to the study of nuclear fission, confirming and extending earlier findings about the splitting of the uranium nucleus and the emission of neutrons in the process. He published a series of papers that established his reputation in nuclear physics and kept him at the frontier of the field.

Return to China

In 1948, on the eve of the establishment of the People's Republic, Qian Sanqiang returned to China, bringing apparatus, notes and isotopes that he had gathered in France. He was appointed professor of physics at Tsinghua University and later helped to establish the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, which became the seat of Chinese nuclear research.

He worked to build up the study of nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry in a country that possessed almost none of the instruments, materials or trained personnel required, and he recruited and trained a new generation of researchers. He was among the small group of scientists who advised the government on the development of atomic energy.

In the 1950s the government decided to pursue nuclear weapons, and Qian Sanqiang became a central figure in the undertaking. He led the scientific organisation of the programme and, after the withdrawal of Soviet advisers at the end of the decade, helped to direct the effort that proceeded with Chinese resources alone.

The Nuclear Weapons Programme

Qian Sanqiang was a principal organiser and one of the chief scientists of the nuclear weapons project. He worked on the physics of the bomb and on the production of the fissile materials without which no weapon could be made, and he pushed for the construction of reactors and of the separation plants required to produce plutonium and enriched uranium.

The programme achieved its first success on 16 October 1964, when China tested a nuclear device in the desert of Xinjiang, becoming the fifth country to do so. The device had been designed and built under conditions of secrecy and scarcity, and its success transformed the strategic position of the country.

Three years later, in 1967, China tested a thermonuclear device, and Qian Sanqiang was among those honoured for the achievement. He was called the father of the Chinese atomic bomb, but he consistently described the work as a collective effort and distributed praise among the many scientists and workers involved.

Later Career and Reconstruction

Qian Sanqiang went on to direct the Institute of Atomic Energy and later the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, moving from weapons work to broader questions of nuclear science and of the peaceful uses of atomic energy. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and held senior posts in science administration.

During the Cultural Revolution he was criticised and removed from his positions, and the nuclear research institutes suffered disruption. He was later rehabilitated and returned to public careers, and in the 1970s and 1980s he worked to rebuild the scientific institutions that had been damaged and to renew contacts with scientists abroad.

He served as a vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and as a member of the Chinese Communist Party's central bodies, and he used his standing to argue for investment in basic science and for the training of young researchers. His last years were devoted to restoring a scientific community that had been scattered.

Legacy

Qian Sanqiang was honoured as one of the founders of Chinese nuclear science and of the country's nuclear deterrent, and his name is associated with a science award for young researchers. He was also the husband of He Zehui, a distinguished physicist in her own right, and the pair were known as a remarkable scientific partnership.

He died on 28 June 1992 in Beijing. In the history of Chinese science he is remembered as the architect of the transition from a country without nuclear physics to one that built and tested atomic and hydrogen bombs within two decades, a transformation achieved by a small group of determined people.

His career illustrates the central role of a scientific organiser, as distinct from a single discoverer, in the creation of a major national technical capability. He stands with Qian Xuesen and other returning scientists as a founding figure of the modern Chinese technological state.

See also

• Chinese nuclear weapons program
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Nuclear fission
• He Zehui