Practicing Mr. Science: Chinese Scientists and the May Fourth Movement from Zhu Kezhen to Fang Lizhi

Abstract

Abstract As many historians who have studied the May Fourth have recognized, science was an important part of both the May Fourth, with Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science as its two banners, and its impact. Yet, besides valuable studies by Fan Hongye (樊洪业) and others on the close connections between the May Fourth and the Science Society of China and Charlotte Furth on the geologist Ding Wenjiang, little has been done on the relationship between Chinese scientists and the May Fourth, especially in the late twentieth century. In an attempt to explore this critical dimension of the May Fourth history, I have chosen to examine the lives and careers of two prominent practicing scientists and their connections with the May Fourth: the meteorologist Zhu Kezhen (竺可桢1890--1974) and the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi (方励之1936--2012). Both identified primarily as scientists even as they carried out administrative duties and political activism (in Fang’s case), their evolving and differentiated views of the May Fourth and its legacy indicated possibly generational and disciplinary dynamics at work.