Chinese American Hero: Dr. Qian Xue-sen
November 10, 2009
This is Week 33 of AsianWeek’s salute to Chinese American heroes, in strategic partnership with Chinese American Heroes, a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to documenting the contributions of Chinese Americans to America and the world.
This week we would like to talk about a very unusual person who was once a Chinese immigrant to America. He wanted to be an American, and had his citizenship application been accepted, could have been a great Chinese American hero.
His name was Dr. Qian Xue-sen (aka: Tsien Hsue-shen) and he died on October 31, 2009. Dr. Qian was a very special immigrant who came to America, first attending MIT, and then the California Institute of Technology where he earned his PhD. He was considered to be a genius among geniuses by many of the top scientists of his day. Mathematics was his specialty.
Even though he only had US residency instead of citizenship, he was granted a secret security clearance by the US Army because he was such a brilliant mathematician. The state of the art missile technology he worked on was considered “Top Secret” by the US Government. Qian also served America by leading the effort to develop innovations in jet propulsion, research which was originally intended for aircraft, but eventually led to the development of the first generation of solid fuel rockets. Because his math was world class, he was invited and participated in our Manhattan Project which developed the first atomic bombs. Dr. Qian was considered so critical to rocket development at the end of World War II that he was commissioned a Colonel in the US Army so that he would have sufficient stature to debrief captured German rocket scientists about their research. Among those scientists he interviewed was Dr. Wernher von Braun, later to become known as the “Father of the American Space Program.”
Dr. Qian received much recognition among his peers and his mentor, Dr. Theodore von Karman, a preeminent physicist at that time, called Dr. Qian, “the undisputed genius” whose work was providing an enormous impetus to advances in high-speed aerodynamics and jet propulsion. He enjoyed teaching at CalTech and leading the research as a founding scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL.) In 1949, he drafted the concept of a space plane which was headlined on the front page of the New York Times. That concept evolved much later into NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. After having done so much for the United States, Dr. Qian applied to become an American citizen.
Unfortunately for Dr. Qian, he’d been like many other American college students of the 1930s who’d attended at least one meeting that was sponsored or attended, by known Communists. Such meetings were monitored by the FBI and someone had put Dr. Qian’s name on an attendance list. During the days of the Red Scare and terror about the communist takeover of China, this was enough to put Dr. Qian on the suspected communist list. For five years he was harassed by federal authorities and his application for citizenship was rejected. After becoming one of the leading rocket scientists in the world and having made unique scientific accomplishments on behalf of America, his ego was badly bruised by this undignified treatment. Not only was he shunned by many of his colleagues and by many other Americans, he also lost his security clearance. In addition, he was kept under virtual house arrest by the FBI. Unable to work and unable to travel lest he be tempted to reveal national secrets he spent years reflecting on how America had gone crazy and shown itself to be ungrateful for his work.
The US State Department and CalTech leaders tried to protect him, and keep him from being deported, but it was in vain. In a special deal, he was exchanged for several American POWs captured during the Korean War and deported to China.
In 1956, when Dr. Qian came back to China there was no infrastructure for any advanced military projects in China. China was more than happy to welcome such an experienced mathematician and rocket scientist. Premier Chou En-lai said that with Dr. Qian leading their effort that the Chinese Government finally had the confidence that China could develop its own missile program. Dr. Qian became the leader, not only of China’s missile development, but played key roles in the development of China’s nuclear weapons and space projects. He became variously known as the “Father of Chinese Rocketry” or the “Father of the Chinese Space Program.”
Iris Chang’s bestselling book, ‘Thread of the Silkworm’ was an account of Dr. Qian’s life that highlighted just how important a role he played in how Chinese research methodology would develop in both military and civilian settings. Dr. Qian emphasized the value of reading and analyzing open-source scientific journals as the basic research essential for any long-term, scientific development. China would generally rely on building upon incremental achievements instead of on making sudden breakthroughs in technology. Such an approach was well-suited for a country starting out without much money, resources, and without the highly developed educational, industrial, scientific, and technical bases of a country like the United States.
Now that China’s military and economy has made so much technological progress the US is going to be spending billions of dollars now and in the future to maintain our edge against China, scientifically, commercially, and militarily. In addition, the fact that Chinese military equipment is sold or traded around the world means that our forces will continue to face the dangers of Chinese weapons in the hands of opponents far into the future. There shouldn’t have been any reason for this to happen. Qian had been the victim of overzealous anti-communist hysteria and racism. He should have become an American citizen whose extraordinary talents continued to serve to keep America preeminent in military and space developments. If not for this American mistake, China would still be decades behind the West in missile and space technology.
Chinese American Heroes also acknowledges the exceptional contributions made by the late Iris Chang, whose book, “Thread of the Silkworm” was meticulously researched. With bilingual skills in Mandarin and English, Chang was able to do interviews both in the US and in China.
All of her interviews for her three major books, including, “The Chinese in America,” “The Rape of Nanking,” and “Thread of the Silkworm” were recorded on video and have been transferred to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution’s library for archiving and historical purposes. We will always be grateful for the extremely valuable work that she did in her tragically short life.
For information about Chinese American heroes, please visit the Chinese American Heroes website at www.chineseamericanheroes.org.
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