Joseph Needham
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Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (December 9, 1900 – March 24 1995) was a British biochemist, but was best known as a pre-eminent authority on the history of Chinese science. He was elected a fellow of both the Royal Society and the British Academy - a highly unusual achievement. In China, he is known mainly by his Chinese name Li Yuese (李约瑟; Pinyin: Lǐ Yuēsè: Wade-Giles: Li Yüeh-Sê).
He pioneered the Western academic recognition of China's scientific past with the ongoing, monumental Science and Civilisation in China Series (SCC, also known as History of Science in China in some Asian sources). This encyclopaedic opus magnum revealed the historical development of Chinese science. Needham's Grand Question was raised about stagnation of China's technological development.
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[edit] Early career
Needham was the only child of a Scottish family in London: his father was a doctor and his mother, Alicia Adelaïde Needham née Montgomery (1863-1945) was a composer and music teacher. Needham studied at Cambridge University, received his bachelor's degree in 1921, master's degree in January 1925 and doctorate in October 1925. After graduation, he worked in F.G. Hopkins's laboratory at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, specialising in embryology and morphogenesis.
[edit] China
Three Chinese scientists came to work with Needham in 1936: Lu Gwei-djen, Wang Ying-lai, and Chen Shi-chang. Lu (1904-1991), daughter of a Nanjingese pharmacist, taught Needham Classical Chinese. This ignited Needham's interest in China's technological and scientific past.
Under the Royal Society's direction, Needham was the director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing from 1942 to 1946, collaborating with the historian Wang Ling and solidifying his passion for Chinese scientific history. He also met numerous Chinese scholars including painter Wu Zuoren, and travelled to sites in western China including Dunhuang and Yunnan. He also visited educational institutions, from which large amounts of references and materials were collected, which would aid his editing of the Science and Civilisation in China Series.
After two years' tenure as the first head of the Natural Science division at UNESCO in Paris, France - indeed, it was Needham who insisted that Science should be included in the organisation's mandate - he returned to Gonville and Caius College in 1948 when Cambridge University Press partially funded his Science and Civilisation in China series. He devoted much energy to the history of Chinese science until his retirement in 1990, even though he continued to teach biochemistry until 1966. He also supported and actually signed the unfounded Chinese communist claims of American biological warfare as an inspector from 1952 to 1953 in North Korea during the Korean War.
In 1966, Needham became Master of Gonville and Caius College.
With Derek Bryan, a retired diplomat, he established the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, which for some years provided the only way for the British to visit the People's Republic.
The Needham Research Institute, devoted to the study of China's scientific history, was opened in 1985 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Needham was first married to Dorothy Moyle (née Moyle, 1896-1987). Two years after Dorothy's death (1989), Needham was re-married to Lu Gwei-djen. He suffered from Parkinson's disease from 1982, and died at the age of 94 at his Cambridge home.
[edit] See also
- Sir Christopher Hum, a successor as Master of Caius College.
- Anglo-Chinese relations
[edit] External links
[edit] English
- Joseph Needham and the rise of the West
- Needham Research Institute (NRI)
- Science and Civilisation in China
- Asian Philosophy and Critical Thinking: Divergence or Convergence?
- Needham's History and Science in China (just ignore the photo at the top of the page)
- Guide to manuscripts by British scientists: N, O
[edit] Chinese
The following links are all in Chinese
- Xinhua：Today's NRI
- Papers in the last ten years on Needham and his Grand Question
- Needham and his early knowledge on Chinese culture
- Brief introduction of the exhibition in Taipei on "Needham and Chinese science during the Second Sino-Japanese War"
- Brief biography
- Tidbits on Needham's daily activities
| Preceded by: Sir Nevill Mott | Master of Gonville and Caius College 1966-1976 | Succeeded by: Sir William Wade |
bg:Джоузеф Нийдам
de:Joseph Needham
fi:Joseph Needham
fr:Joseph Needham
zh:李约瑟
Categories: Articles to be merged since July 2006 | British biochemists | British science writers | Fellows of the Royal Society | Fellows of the British Academy | Sinologists | Oundle | Non-Chinese known by Chinese names | Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge | Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge | Foreigners in China | 1900 births | 1995 deaths | Anglo-Chinese relations
