Lee, Yuan Tseh (1936-)

Lee, Yuan Tseh I 777 storytelling, and questions misconceptions about Chi After Lee worked at odd jobs for decades and nese "cruelty." In the chapter, "Girls of My Acquaint served as the editor of the American Banker from ance," Lee acknowledges the gender oppression of 1918 to 1927, Lee lost his job with humiliation and women in China but challenges the stereotype of Chi finally decided to leave for China. Although China nese parents killing their baby girls. In discussing his had been under siege of the Japanese Imperial Army experience in relation to the Chinese Educational Mis during the 1930s, Lee could not find decent work and sion, Lee questions Western imperialist practices in suffered from poverty. His last cotTespondence with China and considers Yung Wing's project as a remedy the United States was in 1938, when he was allegedly for "the wrongs" committed by the so-called "Chris killed by the Japanese bombing of Canton. tian" and "enlightened nations." In the last chapter, Yuan Shu "First Experiences in America," Lee also describes See also Chinese Americans his own experience in a train robbery and critiques the violence in the industrialized America. Though it is categorizedas an autobiography, Lee's work focuses References mostly on his memory of everyday practice of Chinese Lee, Yan Phou. 1887. When l Was a Boy in China. Boston: culture and society and his impression of the techno Lothrop Publishing Company. logically oriented United States. Lee, Yan Phou. 1887. "Why I Am Not a Heathen." North Lee also wrote polemic essays explaining his faith American Review 145 (September): 306-312. and defending Chinese presence in the United States. Lee, Yan Phou. 1889. "The Chinese Must Stay." North 148 (April): 476---483. His first essay, "Why I Arn Not aHeathen," was pub American Review Ling, Amy. 2002. "Yan Phou Lee on the Asian American lished in NorthAmerican Review in September 1887, Frontier." In Josephine Lee et al., eds., Re/collecting and served as a response to his fellow Chinese Ameri Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History. can Wong Chin Foo's essay, "Why Arn I a Heathen?" Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 273-87. carried in the April issue of the same journal. Lee answers Wong's concern by differentiating between religion and ethics and narrating his own spiritual jour ney from a "heathen" to a Christian. He questions the Lee, Yuan Tseh (1936-) hypocrisy of the British government in claiming to be a Christian nation but practicing gunboat policy in Yuan Tseh Lee is a prominent Taiwan-born scientist China. Lee concludes by reiterating his faith in "true who spent much of his scientific career in the United Christianity" and embracing the values of cosmopoli States, including conducting the research that won tanism. him a share of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He As anti-Chinese sentiment and legal exclusion of returned to the island in 1994 where he has played an the Chinese escalated in the United States, Lee active role in its science and education policy and in changed his modest tone in the previous essay and its politics. wrotea powerful argument in the essay, "The Chinese Yuan Tseh Lee (Li Yuanzhe in pinyin) was born Must Stay," carried in the North American Review in on November 19, 1936, in Hsinchu (Xinzhu) in April 1889. Resorting to the high ideals of the found Taiwan. His fatherLee Tze-fan (Li Zefan) was an artist ing fathers of the Republic, Lee questions "this gener and educator, and his mother Ts'ai Pei (Cai Pei) ation of Americans in their treatment of other races" directed a kindergarten. At the time Taiwan was under and condemns the laws passed against the Chinese Japanese occupation, so Lee grew up speaking and the anti-Chinese platform adoptedby both politi Japanese and went to a Japanese school until the end cal parties on the West Coast. With statistics, exam of World War II in 1945 when the island returned to ples, and logical reasoning, Lee challenges all 11 Chinese rule. After some initial difficulties, Lee charges against the Chinese and dismisses them one adjusted to going to a Chinese school and learned to by one as contradictory, speculative, and malicious. speak Chinese. Soon he became an avid reader of 778 I Lee, Yuan Tseh books and magazines (both Chinese and Japanese), limitations of Hershbach's crossed molecular beam which greatly expanded his horizon and turned him apparatus was that it could work only with alkali mol into a young idealist and even a socialist. Lee excelled ecules. Within a year, however, Lee, with the support in both academics and sports (baseball and table ten of a team of graduate students and technicians, suc nis), but it was a biography of Marie Curie that led cessfully designed and constructed a machine capable him to decide to pursue a career in science. of can·ying out such experiments with nonalkali mole Lee entered the elite Taiwan University in 1955 to cules, which opened the era of universal crossed study chemical engineering, but changed to chemistry molecular beam experimentation that was fundamental a year later because he was attracted in part by the to understanding exactly what happened during chemi devotion of some of its faculty. Upon the recommen cal reactions. Hershbach marveled at Lee's talent and dations of an upper classman, C. T. Chang (Zhang skills, calling him "the Mozart of physical chemistry." Zhaoding), he spent much time and energy on physics He also commented that Lee could make such a com as a foundation forthe understanding of most chemical plicated machine and make it work because he had phenomena, which eventually led him to specialize in "tive thousand years of cultural heritage" behind him. physical chemistry. Following his graduation in 1959, In 1968, Lee was hired as an assistant professor at he enrolled in the graduate program in chemistry at the University of Chicago where he continued and Tsinghua University in Hsinchu where he obtained expanded his earlier successes with new generations of his MS with a thesis on the studies of natural radioiso crossed molecular beams apparati that revolutionized topes present in a mineral called Hukutolite. Afterward the field.In quick succession he was promoted to associ he stayed at Tsinghua as a research assistant con ate professor in 1971 and full professor in 1973. But in ducting research on the determination of the structure 1974 he returned to Berkeley as both a professorof of a substance called tricyclopentadienyl samarium chemistry and a principalinvestiga tor at the Lawrence using x-rays. Throughout this period, Lee learned to Berkeley National Laboratory that the university ran make instruments and set up sophisticated experiments under contract with the federal government. He also under primitive conditions that would serve him well naturalized as a U.S. citizen that same year. later in his career. At Berkeley, Lee continued to lead research in his In 1962, Lee entered the University of California, field with the construction of several molecular beams Berkeley, to pursue a PhD in chemistry. There he was apparati specially designed to examine reaction interested in the research on chemical reactions by dynamics, photochemical processes, and molecular Dudley Hershbach, one of his chemistry professors, spectroscopy. His lab attracted students and scientists but Hershbach soon moved to Harvard. Lee ended up from all over the world and in turn produced many working with Bruce Mahan, whose style of providing future leaders in the field.Hon ors also poured in little guidance but maximum freedom benefited Lee during this period: he was elected a member of the in the long run as it forcedand encouraged him to find U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1979, a solutions to scientificpr oblems on his own. After suc member of Academia Sinica, the highest scholarly cessfully completing an experiment on reactions acclaim in Taiwan, several honorary professorships between excited and ground-state alkali atoms, Lee from universities in mainland China, the Ernest 0. received his PhD in 1965 and stayed in Mahan's lab Lawrence Award fromthe U.S. Department of Energy as a postdoc. This gave Lee the opportunity to carry in 1981, the ational Medal of Science in early 1986, out studies on ion-molecule reactions by shooting and later that same year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, crossed beams of molecules (ions) at each other and which he shared with Hershbach and Canadian chem using detectors to examine their reactions, a fieldthat ist John C. Polanyi "for their contributions concerning was pioneered by Hershbach. the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." In February 1967, this interest in molecular beam As he gained prominence, Lee became increasingly reactions led Lee to take up a second postdoc with active in public policy both on and off campus, Hershbach at Harvard. At the time, one of the major including serving as cochair of the chancellor's Leong, Russell I 779 Asian-American Affairs Committee at Berkeley and as Takeuchi, Yoshito. 2007/2008. "Message from Nobel Lau a member of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. reates to Young People Who Aspire to a Career in Chemistry (6). Professor Yuan Tseh Lee, 1986 Nobel Finally, in 1994, attracted by the prospect of Prize in Chemistry."Ch emical Education International democratic reforms in Taiwan and propelled by an 8. http:!/o ld. i u pac.org/pu bl ications/cei/vol8/080 I attachment to his birthplace, Lee decided to take early xLee.pdf. Accessed December 2009. retirement from Berkeley and return to Taiwan to become the president of Academia Sinica (he gave up his U.S.

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