Ch'ien San-ch'iang (191 3-), nuclear physicist. After 1949 he was the director of atomic energy research in the Academy of Sciences at Peking. Peking was the birthplace of Ch'ien Sanch'iang, the son of the philologist Ch'ien Hsuant'ung (q.v.). Little is known about his childhood. After being graduated in 1936 from Tsinghua University, where he majored in physics, he was awarded a Sino-French Educational Foundation scholarship for study in France. He worked for several years at the Curie radiological institute in Paris under the guidance of Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie. He completed his doctorate at the University of Paris in 1940. His thesis was entitled Etude des collisions des particules avec les noyaux d'hydrogene. Ch'ien remained in Paris to continue research on nuclear fission. In 1946 Ch'ien was awarded the physics prize of the French Academy for his work in nuclear physics. In December of that year he was attached as a technical expert to the Chinese delegation at the first session of the general conference of UNESCO held in Paris. On his return to China after more than ten years in Europe, Ch'ien joined the staff of Tsinghua University as professor of physics and became the director of the institute of atomic research of the National Academy of Peiping. In 1949 he also was a member of the Chinese delegation, representing the Chinese Scientific Workers Association, to the World Congress of Partisans of Peace held at Paris and Prague. He also visited the Soviet Union at that time. After the Central People's Government was formed at Peking in 1949, Ch'ien San-ch'iang became a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and of the culture and education committee of the Government Administration Council. He also was prominent in several new national organizations, notably the China Peace Committee and the All-China Federation of Democratic Youth, of which he became vice chairman. During the 1950's he was a member of several Chinese delegations to Communistsponsored meetings in Europe. Ch'ien San-ch'iang's major role, however, was the planning and direction of important segments of the national program of scientific mobilization dedicated to developing the People's Republic of China into a nuclear power. In 1949 he was one of a handful of nuclear physicists, all trained in the West, available to the Central People's Government. During the early 1950's he was the director of the institute of modern physics of the Academy of Sciences at Peking, and he assumed responsibility for organizing a program of advanced research and for planning personnel requirements. Early in 1953 he led an important delegation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to the Soviet Union. Ch'ien and his colleagues inspected the Russian atomic research program and pressed for Soviet technical assistance and for Chinese participation in the projected Communist bloc research activities in the field of nuclear energy. Ch'ien was also a member of the Chinese delegation to Stalin's funeral in March 1953. In February 1954 he headed an Academy of Sciences delegation to the Soviet Union. Between 1955 and 1959 Ch'ien San-ch'iang played a leading role at Peking during the period when the Soviet Union provided Communist China with essential equipment and with assistance in the training of scientific personnel in the field of nuclear physics. The Joint Nuclear Research Institute, established in 1 956 at Dubna, near Moscow, played an important role in providing advanced training for Chinese physicists. And the Soviet Union provided the Chinese atomic energy research program with an experimental reactor, a cyclotron, and other equipment.

At the same time that the People's Republic of China was acquiring some Russian equipment and sending scientists to Dubna, it was reorganizing its own nuclear research administration. In 1958 the institute of modern physics of the Academy of Sciences was replaced by a new institute of atomic energy, with Ch'ien Sanch'iang remaining as the director. That institute was given control over all aspects of nuclear physics, radiological chemistry, radiobiology, cosmic ray experiments, reactors, and accelerators. In October 1959, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Ch'ien wrote an article in the Peking People's Daily on "China's Great Advances in the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy." In 1954 Ch'ien became head of the Secretariat of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1955 he became a board member and a member of the standing committee of the department of physics, mathematics, and chemistry of the academy. When the Secretariat was reorganized in 1959 and party control of the Academy of Sciences tightened, Tu Jun-sheng replaced Ch'ien as head of the Secretariat. Ch'ien became the top-ranking deputy secretary general of that key organ. He also served as a member of the national committee of the China Science and Technology Association, vice chairman of the China Physics Society, a member of the Science Planning Committee of the State Council, and a delegate to the National People's Congress. In 1958, after he had openly criticized the "anti-socialist" attitudes of some other Chinese scientists, Ch'ien was admitted to membership in the Chinese Communist party. China's nuclear research program encountered difficulties after 1960 because of the increasing political tensions between the Communist leadership at Peking and that in Moscow, and because of the withdrawal of Soviet scientists and technicians from China. Despite that obstacle, Ch'ien San-ch'iang and other top-ranking Chinese scientists pressed forward in their program to develop nuclear capabilities. The success of their efforts was demonstrated by the Chinese Communist nuclear explosions of October 1964, May 1965, and May 1966. Ch'ien San-ch'iang's wife, Ho Tse-hui, studied nuclear physics in Europe. After 1949 she became head of the counter section of the low energy accelerator laboratory of the institute of atomic energy of the Academy of Sciences. In January 1957 she was awarded a national prize for outstanding research on the process of nuclear emulsion. Ho also served as a delegate to the National People's Congress.