Wang Kan-ch'ang (1907-), outstanding nuclear physicist and a discoverer of the anti sigma minus hyperon, played a leading role in the development of the People's Republic of China's nuclear capabilities. His field of specialization was high energy physics, the study of mesons, hyperons, cosmic rays, and heavy unstable particles.
The son of a prosperous and renowned physician, Wang Kan-ch'ang was born in Ch'angshou, Kiangsu. Little is known of his life before 1929, when he was graduated from Tsinghua University in Peiping at the top of his class. He then went to Germany, where he studied nuclear physics under the noted scientist Dr. Lise Meitner at the University of Berlin and did research on beta rays. After receiving a Ph.D. degree from Berlin in 1934, he returned to China to teach physics at Shantung University in Tsingtao. In 1936 he joined the faculty of Chekiang University in Hangchow. With the advent of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, he moved with the university to Kiangsi, Kwangsi, and Kweichow. Throughout the war period, he carried on teaching and research work with limited equipment and under difficult circumstances. At war's end, Chekiang University sent Wang abroad for further study. He was a research associate in physics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1947-48. He then returned to China.
After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, Wang Kan-ch'ang rose to become one of the country's outstanding research scientists. He served under Ch'ien Sanch'iang (q.v.) as deputy director of the institute of modern physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from November 1953 to July 1958. In February 1955 he was elected to the organization committee for popular lectures on atomic energy, and in June of that year he received membership on the committee of the department of mathematics, physics, and chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. That summer he attended the International Conferences on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held at Geneva and Moscow.
In March 1956 Wang Kan-ch'ang led a group of 21 Chinese nuclear physicists to the Soviet Union to participate in advanced research at the newly established Joint Nuclear Research Institute (JNRI) at Dubna, near Moscow. Wang was made deputy director of the JNRI and a member of its scientific council. As a delegate to the Conference on High Energy Particles at Moscow in May 1956, he presented a paper on atomic research in China. That September, he signed the JNRI constitution on behalf of China at the JNRI Conference in Moscow. In November 1957 Wang served as an organization committee member and a delegate to the International Conference on Certain Physical Phenomena, also held in Moscow.
At the JNRI in Dubna, Wang Kan-ch'ang worked with Dr. Bruno Pontecorvo, who had defected from the West in 1950. In May 1958 The New York Times reported that "with the Chinese physicist Wang Kan-ch'ang, Dr. Pontecorvo was said to have headed a team that increased several times the intensity of the beam of accelerated protons produced by the synchroton and found new particles caused by their collision with nuclear targets." A Peking press release of March 1960 described Wang as one of the discoverers of the anti sigma minus hyperon and quoted his statement that this was the first discovery of a charged anti-hyperon and an advance in knowledge of the basic particles of the micro world. Referring to his four years of research at the JNRI, Wang praised the Russian director of the institute, D. I. Blokhintsev, and the Russian director of the laboratory of high energy particles, V. I. Veksler—as well as the cooperating Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, Rumanian, Polish, Czech, and Korean scientists—for their contributions to this discovery, "which testified once more to the superiority of the socialist system." Wang also declared that the excellent equipment at Dubna was a factor of importance in this discovery and that the discovery could not have been made without the gigantic ten bev synchro-phasotron. Wang returned to Peking in February 1960 to assume office as a deputy director of the institute of atomic energy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This institute had replaced the institute of modern physics in May 1957, and Wang had been named to a deputy directorship in July 1958. At the time of his return to China in 1960, it was rumored that he also would be in charge of a project to install equipment for the manufacture of atomic bombs in Sinkiang province.
Despite the demands placed upon him by his scientific research and administrative responsibilities at the institute of atomic energy—which had control over all aspects of nuclear physics, radiological chemistry, radiobiology, isotope apparatus, cosmic ray experiments, reactors, and accelerators in China—Wang appears to have been relatively active in political affairs. In the 1950's he had been a delegate and a National Committee member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. At the third meeting of this body, he served as a delegate of the Scientific-Technical Association and won reelection to the National Committee. In September 1964 Wang was elected a delegate from Kiangsu to the National People's Congress. He became a member of the presidium of the National People's Congress in December 1964 and a member of the congress's Standing Committee in January 1965. Wang was present on the rostrum for the National Day celebrations of 1967.
Little is known about Wang Kan-ch'ang's personal life except that he was married and the father of five children.
