THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMICAL RESEARCH IN CHINA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00423R000100800001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 15, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 1, 1950
• Content Type: REPORT

Peking Natural History Bulletin IS (3): 145-150. 1950. 50X1 ?
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THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMICAL RESEARCH
IN CHINA
WILLIAM H. ADOLPH
ilmicesort esideur, Leo
(Dapartmest of Biochemistry, Peking Union Medical College)
The writer arrived in the Far East in 1915, enthusiastic; the outlook in Chins
for research and the training of research workers was a bright one. &trout* to %Ina,
I had paid visits to a number of laboratories in Japan where chemists Deemed alive t?
problems of research interest. By contrast, in China laboratory work in chemistry
was only beginning. In one of the first universities visited in China, we were shown
considerable chemistry equipment, on display in show VIM, there were klso laboratory
rooms, but these too were under lock and key. The teaching staff were not in evidence
except at scheduled class periods. The laboratories moreover were generally unheated
and, in winter, cold and uninviting; there was little interest in extra-curriculum
laboratory study and our inquiries about research were met by a- shrug of the
shoulders.
In many of the colleges, chemistry was being taught by Chinese teachers who
had received a smattering of chemistry in Japan. In one normal college which
visited, a Japanese professor lectured on general chemistry through ? Chinese inter-
preter; there was no laboratory work accompanying the lectures; demonstrations were
reduced to elaborate drawings on the blackboard. While some of the better trained
teachers gave themselves conscientiously to the preparation of much-needed xestbooks
and laboratory manuals, the writing of textbooks represented often the path of least
resistance; during the early years of the republic there was a deluge of ill-digested and
second rate textbook matilrial in the sciences, generally.
A few months after my arrival, we were able at_Cheeloo University to equip a
small room for our first studies on Chinese fond materials. Bean curd (tofu) was
among the items analysed. The Kjeldahl equipment was simple; some of it hod a
home-made appearance. Alcohol lamps, burning kaoliang spirit, supplemented by
kerosene blast burners, took the place of Bunsen burners. A few selected students
looked on: Was this research? No, it was only a beginning, but it was in this way,
with simple problems and simple equipment, that beginnings were made.
There stands out in my memory one bright spot in this first year of laboratory
visits. This was a glimpse into the work of Dr. E. V. Jones at Soochow University,
who, himself an inspiring somber of unusual ability, was steering his advanced students
into short original laboeusery geniects, inculcating the spirit of original investigation.
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146 WILLIAM H. AUOLt?H
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it watt ne wno poem ine query;
time ripe for a chemical journal in China?
Shortly after came a visit to Southeastern University at Nanking, where Pro-
fessors Wang Chin, Chang Tzu-kao and Sun Hung-fen had begun laboratory isiltruc-
don in chemistry. Their thoroughness and perseverance is measured by the large
number of Chinese chemists now in responsible posts who received their training in
this laboratory.
For the year 1917, Chemical Abstracts printed two abstracts of chemical work
in China. For the year 1937, the date of the out-break of Sino Japanese hostilities,
the number of abstracts from China was approximately 200. The writer has been
connected with the Cissasical Abstracts services since 1917 and takes delight in recording
the early history of chemical research in China as he ha, seen it pam in review during
the score or more of years that have elapsed since that date. Tseng t1 has reviewed
the progress of chemistry is China up to the year 1915, enumerating research organise-
done and chemistry publications. The years immediately following 1937 were accom-
panied by SOMA confusion, with partial interruption of ressereh activities.
The development of chemical research in China may be divided into three
periods: first; an introductory period when chemistry wee finding its place in the
teaching curriculum; second, a period of intensive training in laboratory methods with
he building up of importast teaching centers; third, the present period, during which
chemistry research fists expinded and flourished.
The first pried, 1911-1920, coincided roughly with the first decade of the re-
.
public. Chemistry was given a prominent place in the curriculum in both secondary
Khoo!, and colleges, but only a few student laboratories had been established where
the emphasis was upon individual experimentation. There were very few skilled
chemistry teachers and work in chemistry had become largely a matter of textbook
instruction. There was moreover among institutional and government administrators
as adequate understanding of the research method as applied to science generally.
Many Chinese students, returning from specialized training in chemistry abroad,
be.oerae discouraged and drifted into other lines of employment. The writer has
. ;scowled elsewhere (2) observations on the early developments in chemical education in
Cgs's.
The sped peded, covering the decade from 1921 to 1930, was marked by the
srowth and development of chemistry laboratories at university centers in Canton,
Shanghai, Soochow, Nanking, Tsinan, Tientsin and Peking, and by the beginnings of
chemical research. In the centers named, a group of eight or ten teachers of outstanding
personality. some Chinese, wale western, laid sound foundations. The Peking Union
Medical College, founded at the beginning of this period, helped set the pace and define
the tone and quality of genuine research. During these years, the government
tiniverpities gradually rose to positions of influence and leadership. The Rockefeller
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education and made grants to private and government universities for research
equipment, and to aid in the erection of laboratory buildings. Most of the earliest
laboratory buildings, of which that erected by the University of Nanking in 1916 is
typical, were designed to house all the sciences. The first university laboratory build-
ing built for chemistry only was that erected at Tsinghua University in 1932. The
laboratory building of the Chemistry Research Institute of the Academia Sinica in
Shanghai was completed in 1936.
One of the difficulties which the first research workers in China encountered
was the lack of gas for laboratory use. It is only within the last twenty-five years that
satisfactory facilities for laboratory gas have been installed in the larger universities.
These installations inipa few cases supply coal gas; others are small units arranged for
the cracking of Diesel oil, kerosene, or other liquid fuel. Many of the laboratories
throughout the country. - and this includes most middle schools, - are still handicapped
by the lack of gas supply.
Chemical research in China seems to have progressed through the same stages
of development which characterized the growth of chemical research in America and in
Japan. It began with a chemical study of natural products. The firgt papers, there-
fore, were essentially analytical; they were concerned with analyses of vegetable
oils, minerals, coal, food materials, alloys. Mabee (3) gives a resume of some of the
laboratory studies being carried on in the year 1925. He is careful to use the term
"chemical investigation" rather than "chemical research" to describe the activities of
this earlier period. It was only after this field of China's natural resources had been
explored that investigators attempted the more complicated problems of fundamental
chemical research.
It is difficult to determine which tvas actually the first published research in
chemistry from a laboratory in China. Among the early investigations however should
be mentioned the papers by Hu Szu-hung on zinc in Chinese brass, Tsao Yuan-yu on
tung oil, Han Tsu-kang on salt, and Wang Chin on ancient Chinese coinage. All of
these appeared in Science (101*) in Chinese, before the year 1921. Tseng (1) gives
a more complete list of the early contributions to chemistry which appeared in this earlier
period. Among other contributions which appeared in China about this time, but written
in English, may be mentioned two papers: one on Chinese cement by C. H. Hsu,
another on Chinese bronzes by 1'. Y. Chen, published in the Far Eastern Review
for 1921, also a paper on the analysis of soybean products by Adolph and Kiang, which
appeared in the Chinese Medical. Journal in 1920. Among papers from China
laboratories which appeared in print outside of China, may be mentioned one on
metabolism in China, by Read and Wong, published in the Philippine Journal of
Science in 1923.
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' of a medium for publication. There were no journals in China devoted strictly to
chemistry or to chemistry research. Some of the early contributions from Chinese
laboratories were therefore published in Europe or America, and a few in Japanese
journals; others appeared in medical journals either in China or abroad. A list pre-
pared by the writer (4) in 1924, names the periodicals in China in which articles
chemical interest had been published:
China Medical Journal
Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
Far Eastern Review
Science*
Transactions of .the Science Society of China
China Journal of Science and Arts
Lingnan Agricultural Review
? Journal of the Chinese Society of Chemical Industry*
All the above were printed in English, except those marked (*) which were in
Chinese.
Among the early chemical papers which appeared in these journals many con-
sisted mainly of tables of analyses; others were connected with trade reports, or were
in the nature of reviews. There was not in fact enough genuine scientific research in
China, previous to the year 1930, except perhaps in the field of medicine, to have
justified even one thin number of an occasional research journal.
There were moreover in the earlier days no annual meetings at which chemists
could gather to present and discuss research papers. Several papers of interest to the
biochemists were presented at a meeting of the Chinese Medical Association held in
*Peking in 1920. Again, in 1925, at a general conference in Nanking of teachers from
the western-founded colleges and universities, ? group of a &son chemistry teachers
met for the presentation of original laboratory contributions. As teachers they were
primarily interested in incorporating the research point of-view in every well-rounded
teaching program. At the annual meetings of the Science ?Society, occasional papers
of chemical interest had also been included in the program. The Chinese Physiological
Society, founded in 1927, also attracted a group of chemists to their annual meetings.
The meetings of the Chinese Chemical Society did not become a recognized annual
function for the presentation of chemistry research papers till about 1931; since that
date their meetings have been charaeterized by vigorous programs.
The third period in the history of chemical research began about 1931, shortly
after the Kuomintang government came into power. This period was marked by the
founding of the Journal of the Chivies* Chemical Society in 1933 and the Journal of
Chemical Engineering, China, in 1934, and also by the establishment is the universities
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and elsewhere of institutes specifically for chemical research. Among the first of these
institutes should be mentioned: the Chemistry Research Institute of the Academia Sinica
at Shanghai established in 1928, the Shanghai Science Institute (1929), the Chemistry
Research Institute of the Peiping Academy founded, in 1930, the Huang Hai Chemical
Research Laboratory at Tangku founded in 1922, and the two government laboratories,
the Central Research Laboratory and the Fuel Research Laboratory (1930). Enthusiasm
'for the fo'unding of research institutes of all kinds spread among the universities in the
years immediately following 1928; only the most vigorous of these have survived. Most
of these research institutes planned to publish their own research papers each in a
separate Ties of Science Reports. The .Science Reports of the National Tsinghssa Uni-
versity, Series A and B is an example of this type of publication. Many papers which
might otherwise have been published in the Journal of the Chinese Chemical Society
appeared instead in one of these report series. The Chemistry Research Institute of
the Academia Sinica discontinued its separate publication after the completion of
volume 1.
The Ministry of Education had already prescribed that all candidates for the
B.S. (16?) degree, the degree awarded at the close of the 4-year undergraduate tourie,
should submit a thesis as part of the degree requirement. This was interpreted by the,
progressive universities to mean a laboratory thesis, involving as far as possible a
piece of original work. This became a distinct stimulus to research work. University
departments of chemistry were re-organized with this requirement in mind, and the
younger members of the teaching staffs returning from abroad with higher degrees and
special training were able to make ? vital contribution to this type of laboratory
teaching. Equipment was already available in many universities and the new personnel
knew how to use it.
In China, as in western countries, chemical research in the universities is
closely related to work for the higher or postgraduate degrees. As far as can be
determined, the first M.S. degrees in chemistry in China were awarded at Soochow
University in 1917. The two theses submitted for this degree in that year were the
result of laboratory studies carried out under the direction of Professor E. V. Jones.
The first fully organised graduate school (MU) in China was established by Yen-
ching University in 1926, with a research thesis required for the M.S. degree; some of
the first degrees awarded under this plan were in chemistry. Other universities follow-
ed with similar arrangements for graduate work within the research institute plan.
According to the government regulation, the M.S. degree (a?) was to be awarded
after a minimum of two years of work including the completion of a research thesis.
It was now possible for the student of chemistry at institutions meeting the Ministry
of Education's requirements to obtain a chemical training equal to that represented by
the M.S. degree in chemistry in the better universities abroad.
The distribution of research interest in China between different fields of
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150 WILLIAM H. ADOLPH
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of the published papers were in the field of biochemistry, incleding foods and nutrition,
20 percent in industrial chemistry, 18 percent in organic chemistry and 27 percent in
inorganic and physical chemistry. In general, interest was centered in the development
of China's natural resources, and ? in problems related to medicine and nutritional
welfare.
During the years following 1937 the attention of many Chinese research workers
was turned to the war industries. Important investigations were carried out in the
field of liquid fuels, explosives, ceramics and adsorbents for gas masks. Probably
China's most outstanding war studies were those on motor fuels. Difficulties in
, securing petroleum products led to the successful employment in certain areas of a
gasoline substitute obtained by the cracking of vegetable oils.
The stage is set for very substantial advances in chemical research. The public,
the universities and the new government; alive to the importance of chemistry in
industry, are ready to stress the research method of approach to technical problems. It
is inevitable that an era of peace will furnish the appropriate opportunity.
REFERENCES
1. Tseng, C. L., Alk 19; 1514-1554, 1935.
2. Adolph, W. H., J. Chem. Educ. 4; 1233-1240, 1488-1492, 1927.
3. Mabee, F. C., China J. Science & Arts 3; 297-303, 1925.
4. Adolph, W. H., Chem. & Ind. 43; 504, 1924.
Or
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