Hu Xiansu or Hu Hsen-Hsu (simplified Chinese: 胡先骕; traditional Chinese: 胡先驌; Wade–Giles: Hu Hsien-Hsu, 24 May 1894 – 16 July 1968) was a Chinese botanist and traditional scholar. He was the founder of plant taxonomy in China and a pioneer of modern botany and paleobotany research in the country.[2]
Hu Xiansu | |
|---|---|
胡先骕 | |
.jpg) Hu in the 1940s | |
| Born | 24 May 1894 |
| Died | 16 July 1968 (aged 74) |
| Resting place | Mount Lu, Jiangxi |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Education | |
| Children | 6 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | John George Jack |
| Notable students | Wang Wencai |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Hu |
Arguably, his greatest single achievement in botany was the identification the modern existence of the Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood) of the long thought extinct genus Metasequoia in the 1940s.[2][3] The discovery is considered one of the most significant in botany of the 20th Century.[4]
Apart from botany, Hu was also a prominent contributor towards literature, co-founding The Critical Review, a major Chinese-language journal promoting traditional Chinese culture and values during the New Culture Movement.[5] Hu also served as the first principle of what is now Jiangxi Normal University between 1940 to 1944.
Biography edit
Early life edit
Hu Xiansu was born on 24 May 1894 in Xinjian (now Xinjian district, Nanchang), Jiangxi to Hu Chengbi and Chen Caizhi. Considered a prodigy, he was reading the Three Character Classic and the Thousand Character Classic at the age of three, at four he knew thousands of characters, at five he finished learning the Analects and knew more than ten thousand characters.[6][7]
His father died of sickness when he was just nine. He was raised by his widowed mother thereafter.[6][7]
Early education and career edit
In 1906 Hu went to the Hongdu Middle School in Nanchang. Hu studied a preparatory course at the Imperial University of Peking (now Peking University) in 1909. In spring 1912 the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing Empire, discontinuing the operations of the university and ending Hu's studies there.
Hu went to the United States in December 1912 and enrolled in the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley). During his years in Berkeley, Hu became an active member of the newly founded Science Society of China and joined the editorial board of the Society's journal Science. At the same time, Hu read extensively literature works in English.
In 1914 Hu met and befriended Hu Shih in the United States, developing a lifelong friendship. In May 1916, Hu graduated with honors in botany. In 1918, he became a faculty member of National Nanking Higher Normal School (now part of Nanjing University).[6]
Pioneering efforts in Chinese botany edit
In 1920 and 1921, Hu conducted large-scale plant collections in Zhejiang and Jiangxi, naming the new genus Sinojackia in 1920, the first Chinese to do so. In 1922, Hu and Ping Chih founded the first biology department in Chinese public universities (Previously, only missionary universities in China had biology departments). In 1923, Hu and colleagues published their textbook Advanced Botany, which was the first such textbook compiled by Chinese scholars and became widely used in universities around China.[7]
Hu went to the United States again in 1923 and received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1925. His doctoral dissertation, under the supervision of dendrologist John George Jack, is the first comprehensive survey of plants in the whole of China.
After his wife died in Nanking in 1926, Hu resigned from the Department of Biology of Southeast University and became a full-time research fellow at the Institute of Biology of China Science Society.
Leadership in botanical research and institute building edit
In 1928, Hu moved to Beijing and co-founded the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, a major scientific institute in China. Hu directed the botanical branch of the Fan Memorial and from 1932 served as the director of the Institute until 1949. Meanwhile, he taught part-time in the biology departments of Peking University and Beijing Normal University. Hu founded the Lushan Forest Botanical Garden in Jiangxi in 1934.
Along with his colleagues at the Science Society of China, Hu was a key leader of the first biological research institute in the country, and played an important role in founding the Botanical Society of China, serving as its second president. Hu later established the first plantation for botanical research at Mount Lu in Jiujiang, and initiated or conducted large-scale survey of flora of China.
Through Hu's influence, Lushan Botanical Garden established wide exchange networks with botanical gardens and research institutes around the world. In 1936, fearing for the likelihood of a potential outbreak of war in northern China, Hu established the Yunnan Institute of Agriculture and Forest (later renamed Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences) in southwestern China.[2][8]
Scientific achievements and discoveries edit
In 1934, Hu named the new plant family Torricelliaceae, becoming the first Chinese botanist to describe a new family. Over his career, Hu named and described several hundred new species of plants.[2]
Hu co-authored The Miocene Flora of Shandong Province, China between 1938 and 1940 with Ralph W. Chaney, it was the first work investigating China's Cenozoic fossil plants, and is considered the cornerstone of current knowledge of Asian Cenozoic plants.[2]
Identification of Metasequoia edit
In the 1940s, Hu played a key role, along with Wan-Chun Cheng, in identifying the modern existence of the genus Metasequoia in Sichuan,[3] co-naming the newly discovered species of Metasequoia, the glyptostroboides, which was previously known only from fossils.[9] The name of this species was derived from its resemblance to the Chinese swamp cypress (Glyptostrobus).
Later career edit
Between 1940 and 1944, he was the founding principle of the National Chung Cheng University (now Jiangxi Normal University).[10]
In the 1950s, Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines in genetics (Lysenkoism) dominated biological science and agricultural practices in China[a]. The Mendelian doctrine and its practitioners were shunned. Despite this environment, Hu was openly critical of Lysenkoism, stating it as pseudoscience. For this Hu was publicly denounced, and the textbook which he wrote containing related material was banned. Later on Hu was not elected as an Academician to the Chinese Academy of Sciences despite his contributions to Chinese sciences, something partially attributed to his opposition to Lysenkoism.[12]
Between 1950 and 1968, he served as a researcher at the Institute of Plant Taxonomy and the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Death and legacy edit
In May 1968 during the midst of the Cultural Revolution, Hu's workplace informed him that his salary had been suspended. His home was repeatedly ransacked; the books, calligraphy, and paintings he had collected throughout his lifetime were confiscated by the workplace.
As an intellectual, one of the groups targeted during the Cultural Revolution, Hu endured repeated struggle sessions, in which he was ordered to wear a Kuomintang flag to signify his past relation. On 15 July, he was notified to go to his workplace the next day to attend extended struggle sessions, the stress that the news caused on Hu was massive; in the early morning of 16 July 1968, Hu was found dead on his bed, having suffered a heart attack.[13][14] Hu's funeral was held in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery on 15 May 1979. He was buried at the Lushan Botanical Garden at Mount Lu on 15 May 1984.
In the aftermath of his death, interest towards Hu’s works reduced. It wasn’t until the 1990s when there was a reemergence of interest for Hu’s works[2]
Hu is considered one of the foremost contributors to Chinese sciences in the 20th century. The discovery of the Metasequoia glyptostroboides in particular is considered one of the most significant in botany within the 20th Century.[4]
Hu helmed the effort advocating the creation of a national botanical garden in China, which would eventually become the China National Botanical Garden, earning him the title "father" of the project upon its eventual completion in 2022.[15]
Notes edit
- ^ The theory has since been disproven and is now considered to be pseudoscience.[11]
See also edit
Notes edit
- ^ Jiang 2016, p. 174.
- ^ a b c d e f Hu & Ma 2022.
- ^ a b LePage, Williams & Yang 2005.
- ^ a b Ma 2003.
- ^ Fung 2009, p. 777–813.
- ^ a b c Zhou, Yongping (21 November 2022). "胡先骕-南林人物" (in Chinese). Nanjing Forestry University. Archived from the original on 11 December 2023. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
- ^ a b c "胡先骕：中国植物学界"老祖宗"—新闻—科学网". news.sciencenet.cn (in Chinese). ScienceNet. Archived from the original on 15 December 2023. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
- ^ "中国近代植物学研究先驱者——胡先骕----中国植物学会". botany.org.cn (in Chinese). Botanical Society of China. Archived from the original on 16 November 2023. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
- ^ Bell 2016, p. 263, 269, 279.
- ^ Wei, Zhang (17 January 2007). "胡先骕:碰壁的独立" [Hu Xiansu: The independent man who hit a wall]. China Youth Daily (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2 July 2023. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
- ^ Gordin, Michael D. (2012). "How Lysenkoism Became Pseudoscience: Dobzhansky to Velikovsky". Journal of the History of Biology. 45 (3): 443–468. doi:10.1007/s10739-011-9287-3. ISSN 0022-5010. JSTOR 41653570. PMID 21698424. S2CID 7541203.
- ^ "沈善炯回忆录：历尽磨难回国，被迫"改行"，却仍做出重大贡献-深度-知识分子". zhishifenzi.com (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
- ^ Hu, Zonggang (1 February 2008). 胡先骕先生年谱长篇 [Chronicle of Hu Xiansu] (in Chinese). Nanchang: Jiangxi Education Press. ISBN 978-7-5392-4742-7.
- ^ "得书记︱我的胡先骕手迹收藏_上海书评_澎湃新闻-The Paper". thepaper.cn (in Chinese). The Paper. Archived from the original on 20 January 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
- ^ Yang, Yang (2 May 2022). "Behind China's New Botanical Garden, a Decadeslong Struggle". Sixth Tone. Archived from the original on 18 November 2023. Retrieved 28 January 2024.
- ^ International Plant Names Index. Hu.
Works cited edit
- Bell, Andrew W. (2016). "A Tree Grows in China". Journal of American-East Asian Relations. 23 (3): 257–281. doi:10.1163/18765610-02303006.
- Fung, Edmund S. K. (2009). "Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China". Modern Asian Studies. 43 (3). ISSN 0026-749X.
- Hu, Xiaojiang; Ma, Jinshuang (1 April 2022). "The Founder of Plant Taxonomy in China: HU Hsen-Hsu". Protein & Cell. 13 (4): 231–233. doi:10.1007/s13238-021-00877-0. ISSN 1674-8018. PMC 8934367. PMID 34564807.
- Jiang, Lijiang (April 2016). "Retouching the Past with Living Things: Indigenous Species, Tradition, and Biological Research in Republican China, 1918–1937". Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, University of California Press. 46 (2): 154–206 – via ResearchGate.
- LePage, Ben A.; Williams, Christopher J.; Yang, Hong (30 March 2005). The Geobiology and Ecology of Metasequoia. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4020-2631-7.
- Ma, Jinshuang (January 2003). "The chronology of the "Living Fossil" Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Taxodiaceae): a review (1943–2003)". Harvard Papers in Botany. 8 (1) – via ResearchGate.
External links edit
