China and Albert Einstein

The Reception of the Physicist and His Theory in China, 1917-1979

Danian Hu

258 pages, parution le 28/04/2005

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Résumé

China and Albert Einstein is the first extensive study in English or Chinese of China's reception of the celebrated physicist and his theory of relativity. Tracing the influence of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century and Western missionaries and educators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as they introduced key concepts of Western physical science and paved the way for Einstein's radical new ideas, Danian Hu shows us that Chinese receptivity was fostered by the trickle of Chinese students sent abroad for study beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and by the openness of the May Fourth Movement (1916-1923).

In a series of biographical studies of Chinese physicists, Hu describes the Chinese assimilation of relativity and explains how Chinese physicists offered arguments and theories of their own. Hu's account concludes with the troubling story of the fate of foreign ideas such as Einstein's in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when the theory of relativity was denigrated along with Einstein's ideas on democracy and world peace.

China and Albert Einstein is an important contribution to Einstein studies and a landmark work in the history of Chinese science.

L'auteur - Danian Hu

Danian Hu is an Assistant Professor in the History Department and the Asian Studies Program at the City College of New York.

Sommaire

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Prologue
Western Physics Comes to China
China Embraces the Theory of Relativity
Six Pioneers of Relativity
From Eminent Physicist to the "Poor Philosopher"
Einstein: A Hero Reborn from the Criticism
Epilogue
Notes
Index

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Harvard University Press
Auteur(s)	Danian Hu
Parution	28/04/2005
Nb. de pages	258
Format	16 x 24
Couverture	Relié
Poids	537g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780674015388
ISBN13	978-0-674-01538-8