Li Shu-hua T. Jun-chang Li Shu-hua (1890-), internationally known physicist and educator and vice president of the National Peiping Research Academy from 1929 to 1948.

The son of Li Wan-k'uei, a landowning farmer, Li Shu-hua was born in Changli hsien, Chihli (Hopei). He had one younger brother, Li Shu-t'ien. Beginning in 1896, Li Shu-hua studied the Chinese classics under private tutors. Although he sat for the first level of imperial examinations in 1905 and did very well, his hopes of civil appointment were dashed in the autumn of that year when the examination system was abolished. In 1907 he studied at the Changli Higher Primary School, and in 1908 he went to Paoting and enrolled at the Chihli Higher Agricultural School. After the republican revolution of 1 9 1 1 , this school was renamed the Chihli Agricultural Technical Institute. As the top-ranking graduate of the institute in 1912, he was awarded a scholarship of China $500 by the provincial government for higher studies in Japan. At this time, Li Shih-tseng (q.v.) and others launched the program that was to become the work-study movement in France. Because this program cost about China S600 a year per student, Li applied for and received a scholarship increase of China Si 00. After studying French in Peking for about six months, Li and his fellow students embarked on their journey to France, arriving in Paris in January 1913. They then went to Montargis, where Li Shih-tseng had arranged for them to be admitted to the College de J^ontargis. After the so-called second revolution %|llapsed in the autumn of 1913, many KuomintOTg leaders who had opposed Yuan Shih-k'ai werC' forced to flee China. Wang Ching-wei (q.v.) came to Montargis, where he lectured to the Chinese students every Sunday morning.

In the autumn of 1915 Li Shu-hua enrolled at the agricultural institute of the University of Toulouse, from which he was graduated in 1918. By this time, he had become interested in physics, particularly in the electromagnetic theories of Gabriel Lippman and the radioactivity researches of Marie Curie. He enrolled at the University of Paris in 1919, obtained the degree of Licencie es Sciences Physiques in 1920, and began work on his doctorate in the laboratory of Jean Perrin. After defending his dissertation, "Permeabilite selective des membranes polarisees," in June 1922, he became the first Chinese to receive the degree of Docteur es Sciences Physiques from the University of Paris. He then returned to China to become professor of physics at Peking University.

After arriving in Peking in August 1922, Li Shu-hua called on Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei (q.v.), the chancellor of Peking University, to arrange his courses. He made a brief trip to his native village to see his parents before assuming his academic duties. In addition to teaching physics at Peking University, he worked to develop the university's science curriculum. When the National Government at Nanking experimented in 1928 with the organizing of institutions of higher education into "university districts"' for administrative purposes, Li Shuhua served under Li Shih-tseng as vice president of the Peiping university district. The new system proved unwieldy, and the experiment was terminated in the summer of 1929. In the meantime, the National Government had decided to establish the National Peiping Research Academy. The academy was inaugurated in September 1929, with Li Shu-hua as its vice president. He held this post until 1948. In 1930 Chiang Kai-shek appointed Li Shuhua political vice minister of education and a member of the Legislative Yuan. Li and Ch'en Pu-lei (q.v.), the administrative vice minister of education, assumed charge of the ministry because Chiang Kai-shek, who was acting as minister of education, had little time to devote to it. Early in 1931 Li also became a member of the newly established Sino-British Educational and Cultural Endowment Fund, the Sino-French Educational Endowment Fund, and the council of the Academia Sinica. He was appointed minister of education in February 1931, but he resigned after being blamed for the student demonstrations which followed the Japanese attack on Mukden on 18 September 1931. Li Shu-hua returned to north China to devote his attention to the National Peiping Research Academy. Although Li Shih-tseng was its president, Li Shu-hua was responsible for its operation. Under his direction, the academy established research institutes in physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, botany, geology, history, and archaeology. In 1936 the academy began to transfer its equipment and personnel to Shansi because of the threat of war with the Japanese. When the Sino-Japanese war began in July 1937, Li and other educational leaders at Peiping announced their support of the united Li Shu-t'ung front against the Japanese. Li took refuge in the French hospital when the Japanese occupied Peiping, sent his wife and children to Tientsin, and went to Shanghai in October. After going to Wuhan, the temporary seat of the National Government, to arrange for the removal of the National Peiping Research Academy to Kunming, he established an academy office in Hong Kong. In mid-March, he led a group of about 20 staff members to Kunming. The institutes of physics, chemistry, zoology, and history were moved to Kunming soon afterwards. The institute of geology, which had been moved to Nanking in 1935, established headquarters at Changsha and then moved to Peip'ei in Szechwan. At Kunming, Li Shu-hua also served as acting chairman of the board of Sino-French University and performed a number of administrative services for the Academia Sinica. In November 1945 Li Shu-hua went to London as a delegate to the inaugural session of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO^. Before returning to China, he toured Europe and visited the United States, where he paid a call on Albert Einstein. Li also served as a delegate to later sessions of UNESCO, including those at Paris in 1946 and at Mexico City in 1947. In 1947 he visited important scientific institutions in the United States and Japan.

Li was elected to the new National Assembly, which convened in Nanking on 28 March 1948 and which assumed responsibility for the election of National Government officials. He went to Taiwan after the session ended and inspected the island's scientific organizations and institutions. The National Peiping Research Academy, which had returned to Peiping at war's end, celebrated its nineteenth anniversary on 9 September. Li Shu-hua remained in Peiping until mid-December, when the Chinese Communists surrounded the old capital. On 20 December, the National Government sent a plane to Peiping to rescue some prominent scholars marooned there. Although Mei Yi-ch'i, Yuan T'ung-li (qq.v.), Li Shu-hua, and a fewother scholars left Peiping on that plane, many of the other educational leaders at the old capital elected to remain there.

Li Shu-hua went to Paris in July 1949, where he was created a Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur. After serving on the Chinese delegation to the fourth session of UNESCO, he was offered research facilities by Pierre Girard, who also had studied under Jean Perrin and who had become head of the institute of physics, chemistry, and biology of the University of Paris. Li accepted this offer and did research on the properties of large molecules. In 1951-52 he gave lectures on Chinese language and literature at the University of Hamburg. After heading the Chinese delegation to the seventh session of UNESCO, held in Paris in November 1952, he went to New York. At the request of Mei Yi-ch'i, Li was given permission to use laboratory facilities at Columbia University. He also took up the study of the history of Chinese science and technology, using the facilities of the East Asian Library at Columbia, and in 1953 he wrote an article on the origin of the compass. The enthusiastic response to this article encouraged Li to write The South Pointing Carriage and the Mariner's Compass, which was published in both English and Chinese editions in Taipei. He also wrote articles on the history of paper making and printing, and his Ckung-kuo yin-shua-shu ch'i-yuan was published in Hong Kong in 1962.

Li Shu-hua's first wife was Wan Chen-yuan. Their eldest child, Li Chi-chen, m.arried Lung Yin, who became a professor of economics at Nankai University. Their second daughter, Li Yu-chen, married Lin T'ien-hui, who became a senior research scientist at the Smith, Kline, and French Laboratory in the United States. Their son, Li Hsiao-jun, became a senior research scientist at the l^xas Research Center. In 1934 Wan Chen-yuan died in Tientsin, and in 1943 Li Shu-hua married Wang Wen-t'ien, who had studied economics at Berlin University and had taught at Honan University. During the Sino- Japanese war she served as acting dean of students at Nankai University.