Chinese American Scientists: A Transnational History
Zuoyue Wang, Professor, California State Polytechnic University
Moderator: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
In this talk, the speaker defines Chinese American scientists broadly, including both American-educated Chinese scientists who remained in the US and those who returned to China, with particular attention to the generation present in the US in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China was established. By exploring the connected histories of both “stayees” and “returnees,” the speaker argues that Chinese American scientists have contributed to both the Americanization of international science and the transnationalization of American science. In doing so, they have actively shaped—and been shaped by—the geopolitical relationship between the US and China, spanning from the Cold War era to more recent developments exemplified by the US government’s “China Initiative.”
Zuoyue Wang is a professor of history at Cal Poly Pomona, specializing in science, technology, and politics in modern US, China, and transnational contexts. Author of In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America (2008), he is currently studying the history of Chinese American scientists and engineers and US-China scientific relations, for which he received a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2010-2014. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019.