Hu Xiansu
胡先骕
Born(1894-05-24)24 May 1894
Xinjian, Jiangxi, Qing China
Died16 July 1968(1968-07-16) (aged 74)
Beijing, People's Republic of China
Resting placeMount Lu, Jiangxi
NationalityChinese
CitizenshipChina
Alma mater
Children6
Scientific career
Fields
Doctoral advisorJohn George Jack
Notable studentsWang Wencai
Author abbrev. (botany)Hu
Hu Xiansu (left) and Hu Shih, Hu Shih dubbed this picture "the nemisis friends" due to the friendship between the pair despite disagreements over culture and politics[1]

Hu Xiansu or Hu Hsien-Hsu (simplified Chinese: 胡先骕; traditional Chinese: 胡先驌; pinyin: Hú Xiānsù; Wade–Giles: Hsu Hsien-Hsu, 24 May 1894 – 16 July 1968), was a prominent Chinese botanist and influential traditional scholar. He was the founder of plant taxonomy in China and a pioneer of modern botany research and paleobotany in the country.[2]

In the 1940s, he played a key role, along with Wan Chun Cheng, in identifying the modern existence of the long thought extinct genus Metasequoia, an achievement widely hailed as "the greatest discovery of botany in 20th century".[2][3]

Hu also co-founded The Critical Review, a major Chinese-language journal promoting traditional Chinese culture and values during the New Culture Movement.[4]

Early life

Hu 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.[5][6]

His father died of sickness when he was nine. He was raised by his widowed mother thereafter.[5][6]

Education and career

Hu studied a preparatory course at Imperial University of Peking 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 May 1916, Hu graduated with honors in botany. In 1918, he became a faculty member of National Nanking Higher Normal School (later renamed National Southeastern University, National Central University and Nanking University).[5]

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.[6]

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 Southeastern University and became a full-time research fellow at the Institute of Biology of China Science Society. In 1928, he moved to Beijing and co-founded the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology. 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 Lushan Botanical Garden in Jiangxi in 1934. 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 war in north China, Hu established the Yunnan Institute of Agriculture and Forest (later renamed Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences) in southwestern China.[2][7]

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]

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.

Between 1940 and 1944, he was the founding president of the National Chung Cheng University (renamed National Nanchang University in 1949). In the 1940s, he played a key role, along with Wan Chun Cheng, in identifying the modern existence of the genus Metasequoia, an achievement widely regarded as "the greatest discovery of botany in 20th century",[3] also co-naming the newly discovered species previously known only from fossils, in Sichuan, China.[8]

In the 1950s, Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines in genetics (Lysenkoism) dominated biological science and agricultural practices in China. Despite this environment, Hu was openly critical of Lysenko's doctrines, stating it as pseudoscience. For this Hu was publicly denounced, and the textbook which he wrote containing material related was banned. Later Hu was not elected as an Academician to the Chinese Academy of Sciences despite his numerous contributions to Chinese sciences, something partially attributed to his opposition to Lysenkoism.[9]

Between 1950 and 1968, he served as a researcher at the Institute of Plant Taxonomy and the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Later life and death

"Tomb of the Three Elders", burial site of Chen Fenghuai (left), Hu Xiansu (center) and Ren-Chang Ching (right) at Lushan Botanical Garden

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 and the books, calligraphy, and paintings he had collected throughout his lifetime were confiscated by the workplace. As an intellectual, 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.[10][11]Hu's funeral was held in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery on 15 May 1979. He was buried at Lushan Botanical Garden at Mount Lu on 15 May 1984.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 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.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 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.
  3. 1 2 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.
  4. ↑ Fung, Edmund S. K. (2009). "Nationalism and Modernity: The Politics of Cultural Conservatism in Republican China". Modern Asian Studies. 43 (3): 777–813. ISSN 0026-749X.
  5. 1 2 3 周永萍 (21 November 2022). "胡先骕-南林人物". Nanjing Forestry University. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 "胡先骕：中国植物学界"老祖宗"—新闻—科学网". news.sciencenet.cn. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
  7. ↑ "中国近代植物学研究先驱者——胡先骕----中国植物学会". botany.org.cn. Archived from the original on 16 November 2023. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
  8. ↑ Bell (2016), pp. 263, 269, 279.
  9. ↑ "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. Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  10. ↑ "新书介绍:《胡先骕先生年谱长篇》 - 中国知网". 6 June 2022. Archived from the original on 6 June 2022. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  11. ↑ "得书记︱我的胡先骕手迹收藏_上海书评_澎湃新闻-The Paper". thepaper.cn. Archived from the original on 20 January 2023. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  12. ↑ International Plant Names Index.  Hu.

References and further reading

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