Feature: Joseph Needham's wartime China legacy remembered in Britain

Seventy years after the end of World War II, Joseph Needham -- the man who offered great help to Chinese scientists during the war and introduced the history of China's science and technology to the rest of the world -- is still remembered by many.

The Needham Research Institute (NRI), a verdant, quiet place located in west Cambridge, is the home to the Science and Civilization in China (SCC) project.

Walking into the courtyard, one can see an old bodhi tree stand in front of a two-floor brick-red building. Joseph Needham, his former wife Dorothy Moyle, and his wife Lu Gwei-djen, are buried under the tree. The brick-red building is the main building of the NRI.

Chinese elements can be found in every corner of the building: Chinese characters are used as a decorative part of the door handle, and a picture of Daoist Gods is hung on a wall. Dr. Needham used it as the cover illustration for his great work Science and Civilization in China since the publication of the first volume in 1954. Needham once said: "Daoist thought is the root of science and technology in China."

The opposite wall hangs a thank-you letter from late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. After receiving Dr. Needham's SCC Vol. 1, Zhou said in the letter: "This effort is worthy of welcome and will contribute to the cultural exchange between China and Britain."

The beginning of the story of the SCC and the NRI can be traced back to 1937, when a charismatic young biochemist in Cambridge, Joseph Needham, met a Chinese research student, Lu Guizhen. Inspired by Lu, Needham began to build great interest in China.

In the same time, China was suffering from the war and Japan's aggression. Most of the major universities in China were closed and lost their laboratories, equipments and libraries during the war.

"Under the dire conditions of the war with Japan, China's experts were to be found in the oddest places: a team of biochemists deep in caves beneath Yunnan, physicists holed up in an ancient pagoda, statisticians at work in a Confucian temple," British-born American commentator John Derbyshire wrote in a book review for Simon Winchester's biography of Needham.

In 1943, Needham was sent to Chongqing in southwest China as the director of the Sino-British Scientific Cooperation Office. The primary aim of this cooperation was to facilitate the provision of laboratory and scientific journals to Chinese scientists in western China, as was stated by the Needham Research Institute.

"His travels were organized in eleven separate expeditions, the primary purpose of each being to seek out Chinese scientists and hand-deliver any books or equipment they needed," Derbyshire noted.

Needham traveled extensively throughout Sichuan, Yunnan, and other provinces in south, southwest and northwest China, visiting universities and laboratories, and meeting scientists and other academics.

"Chinese science had a very difficult time during World War II, and Needham's help was very much appreciated by Chinese scientists," Dong Qiaosheng, a PHD candidate at the Jesus College of Cambridge University and a researcher at the NRI, told Xinhua.

During his tours in China, Needham got to know then Premier Zhou Enlai and met many Chinese scholars including painter Wu Zuoren and meteorologist Zhu Kezhen. Needham built a deep friendship with them.

During the stay in China, Needham took every opportunity to discuss the history of Chinese science with Chinese scholars he met, and to collect books, documents and other materials on the subject.

After returning to Cambridge in 1948, Needham continued to support China. He started to write the work "Science and Civilization in China" in 1948 and founded the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) with his colleagues in 1965.

"The editor and co-author of Science and Civilization in China, a massive, multi-volume study, he spent more than half a century collecting and compiling evidence that China was the birthplace of everything from chess to cartography, from the stirrup to the suspension bridge," commented Andrew Anthony from the Guardian newspaper

"In the process, he probably did more than any other individual to shift the balance of scientific history towards the East," Anthony said.

In 1987, the NRI was founded to continue the work on the SCC series. The SCC series impressed both the East and the West.

Twenty years after his death, Needham continues to inspire people through his legacies.

Dong, heavily influenced by Needham's academic heritage, told Xinhua: "I decided to study the history of science and technology after reading the book about Joseph Needham. His greatest work, to me, is to introduce this new subject to China and to lead a group of people to continue working in this area until today."

"Needham is a flagship during his time. He opened up a window for the West to know the great contribution China had made to the world over the past 5,000 years. His work changed the ways in which the West evaluates the history of Chinese culture," Dong continued.

Nowadays, two of Needham's legacies: the NRI and SACU, continue to serve as a bridge between Britain and China. The two sides regularly hold academic and cultural events such as conferences, seminars, research trips and reading clubs.

"Apart from continuing the SCC series, the NRI provides a platform for academic communications (between the East and the West)," said Dong.

SACU has been producing a quarterly magazine about China and the Chinese culture -- "China Eye" -- over the last 40 years. It also co-organizes a joint event related to China with the Meridian Society every year in London. Endi