Wang Ganchang
Wang Ganchang Chinese 王淦昌 , Pinyin Wáng Gànchāng , W.-G. Wang Kan-ch'ang ; (Born May 28, 1907 in Changshu ; † December 10, 1998 in Beijing ) was a Chinese nuclear and particle physicist who was one of the leading physicists in the early Chinese nuclear weapons program.
life and work
Wang studied at Tsinghua University from 1928 and graduated in 1929 with a thesis on radon gas. He was briefly assistant professor at the university before continuing his studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1930 with Lise Meitner . At that time, he suggested investigating the nature of the neutral radiation discovered by Walther Bothe and his colleagues from bombarding beryllium with alpha particles with bubble chambers , but no funds were made available for it. In this way, in 1932, James Chadwick in Cambridge succeeded in identifying these rays as neutrons and thus in their discovery.
In 1934 he received his doctorate from Lise Meitner on beta decay spectra and then returned to China. From 1934 to 1936 he was a professor at Shandong University and from 1936 to 1950 at Zhejiang University , where he headed the physics faculty. However, the university was evacuated after the Japanese invasion and he was only able to continue his own research with great difficulty. Among other things, he proposed a neutrino detection via electron capture in 1941 . From 1950 he was at the Zhejiang Institute for Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from 1952 its deputy director. During this time he turned to the study of cosmic radiation (which at that time served as a source of high-energy elementary particles due to the lack of suitable particle accelerators) with bubble chambers and in 1953 set up a laboratory for its study in the mountains of Yunnan Province. In 1956 he was with other Chinese scientists at the new particle accelerator of the JINR in Dubna (Moscow) sent. Among other things, he and his group discovered the negative anti-sigma hyperon there in 1959 (built from the quarks dds).
After returning to China in 1960, he was employed in China's nuclear weapons program, mostly in remote desert regions in western China, which led to the explosion of the first Chinese atomic bomb in 1964 and the first Chinese hydrogen bomb in 1967. In 1969 he became assistant director of the Ninth Research Institute , entrusted with the execution of the first Chinese underground nuclear weapons tests (1969).
In China he is also regarded as the father of inertial fusion with lasers, which he proposed as early as 1964 when a 10 MW laser was developed in Shanghai. However, research in China did not begin until the late 1970s. He also supported the expansion of nuclear energy in China in the 1970s and proposed a corresponding program for China in the 1980s, at the height of the Star Wars initiative in the USA ( program 863 ).
He had been a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 1955. One of the prizes of the Chinese Physical Society is named after him and has been awarded since 2000 for achievements in particle physics and inertial fusion.
In 1982 he received the National Prize for Natural Sciences 1st Class and in 1985 the National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology.
In September 1999, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China , Wang Ganchang and Qian Sanqiang were posthumously awarded the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” (两弹一星 功勋 奖章) Order of Merit for their work in the nuclear weapons program.
Wang Ganchang was a member of the September 3rd Society and served on the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kan Chang Wang: About the β-spectra of ThB + C + C ″ . In: Journal of Physics . tape 87 , no. 9-10 , September 1934, pp. 633-646 , doi : 10.1007 / BF01333330 .
- ↑ Kan Chang Wang: A Suggestion on the Detection of the Neutrino . In: Physical Review . tape 61 , no. 1-2 , 1942, pp. 97 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRev . 61.97 .
- ↑ The head was the nuclear physicist Qian Sanqiang (1913-1992), who later also played an important role in the Chinese nuclear weapons program. He had studied with the Joliot-Curie couple in Paris in the 1930s
- ↑ 陈 融雪: “院士 大户” 九三学社. In: zytzb.gov.cn. April 18, 2017, Retrieved August 27, 2019 (Chinese).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wang, Ganchang |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wang, Kan Chang |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Chinese physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 28, 1907 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Changshu |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 10, 1998 |
| Place of death | Beijing |