Wang Dezhao
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Wang Dezhao or Ouang Te-Tchao ( zh, s=汪德昭, c=, t=, p=; December 20, 1905 – December 28, 1998) was a Chinese physicist who was known for his research in
atmospheric electricity Atmospheric electricity describes the electrical charges in the Earth's atmosphere (or that of another planet). The movement of charge between the Earth's surface, the atmosphere, and the ionosphere is known as the global atmospheric electrica ...
and
underwater acoustics Underwater acoustics (also known as hydroacoustics) is the study of the propagation of sound in water and the interaction of the mechanical waves that constitute sound with the water, its contents and its boundaries. The water may be in the oce ...
. Under the direction of
Paul Langevin Paul Langevin (23 January 1872 – 19 December 1946) was a French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. He was one of the founders of the '' Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes'', an anti-fascist ...
, he helped the French improve sonar at the beginning of World War II and after his return to China, Wang was considered as the founder of national defense water acoustics in China.


Early life and education

Wang was born in 1905 in Guanyun,
Jiangsu Jiangsu is a coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province in East China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the List of Chinese administra ...
, China to an intellectual family. His father was a graduate of Liangjiang Higher Normal School in Nanjing and later served as a civil servant at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forest of the
Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
. Wang grew up in Beijing. In 1928, one year before his graduation from the Physics Department of
Peking Normal University Beijing Normal University (BNU) () is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of China, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education and the Beijing Municipal People's Government. It is a re ...
, he was appointed T.A. by his professor, university president Zhang Yihui who then by the end of 1931, introduced Wang to the prominent French physicist Paul Langevin during his visit to China. This encounter pushed Wang's decision to pursue his studies in France. In 1933, he made the trip to Europe. After one year as a language student at the Université Libre of Bruxelles, he became Langevin's student at École supérieure de physique et de chimie (ESPCI) of Paris where Langevin was the head.


Career in France

Wang was entrusted by Langevin with the research on ionization of particles suspended in the atmosphere, a domain in which Langevin himself had abundantly researched at the turn of the 20th Century for his own doctoral thesis, and in which the world of scientists were increasingly interested for its utility in
meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...
and
radio-electronics ''Radio-Electronics'' was an American electronics magazine that was published under various titles from 1929 to 2003. Hugo Gernsback, sometimes called the father of science fiction, started it as ''Radio-Craft'' in July 1929. The title was change ...
. From 1934 to 1940, Wang published 9 scientific papers and completed the task with his French state doctoral thesis on the ''Electrization of the Particles Suspended in the gas''. Langevin performed a complementary calculation on the results obtained by Wang on a roll of toilet paper when he was secretly imprisoned during 38 days by the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
and then, he reviewed a part of Wang's thesis when he was under house arrest by the end of 1940. Wang's new discoveries on the equilibrium between big and small ions of suspended particles in the gases, as well as the equation he obtained between the numbers of big/small ions and the mobility of small ions, confirmed and completed later by another French scientist J. Bricard in 1948, was referred to as "Langevin-Ouang-Bricard" theory by the
geophysical Geophysics () is a subject of natural science concerned with the physical processes and properties of Earth and its surrounding space environment, and the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. Geophysicists conduct investigations acros ...
science community in the 1950s. In 1939, shortly after France and U.K. declared war against
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
, while all the Langevin laboratories at ESPCI was converted to the Research Group IV of the National Defense Ministry, Wang worked on multiplying the emission power of the ultrasonics submarine detector - known as
Sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...
today - that Langevin invented by the end of World War I using piezoelectric quartz crystals transducer. Wang succeeded to increase its power per unit area by applying sintering process, which improved greatly the efficiency and the reliability of the active sonar system. The technology was transferred to the UK Royal Navy for immediate implementation. Wang has also succeeded to put together an acoustic system capable of dispersing the heavy fog on military airports by creating large amplitude sound waves using a series of high air pressure Hartmann whistles causing the dispersal of particles suspended in the air. A profound friendship was built up between Ouang and Langevin beyond their student-teacher relationship. During the World War II, while Langevin was under home arrest, Wang refused to work for ESPCI led by a pro-German director Jean Thibaud and joined Irène and
Frédéric Joliot-Curie Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie (; ; 19 March 1900 – 14 August 1958) was a French chemist and physicist who received the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his wife, Irène Joliot-Curie, for their discovery of induced radioactivity. They were t ...
- also student of Paul Langevin - at their Institute du Radium, where he researched more in radioactivity until the liberation of Paris by allied forces and the return of Langevin to ESPCI. From that point to the middle of 1950s, while continuing the research in ionized gases based on Langevin's theory and his previous work, Wang made breakthroughs in the following domains: # Inventing high sensibility electrometers; # Measuring the absorption, dispersion and speed of ultrasound in fluid; # Proving the existence of negative electrophoresis discovered by
Felix Ehrenhaft Felix Ehrenhaft (24 April 1879 – 4 March 1952) was an Austrian physicist who contributed to atomic physics, to the measurement of electrical charges and to the optical properties of metal colloids. He was known for his maverick and controversial ...
; # Using β ray to measure and control the thickness of emulsion on photo film and paper. After the war, Wang was awarded with the '' Prix Hughes'' by the ''Academie des Sciences'' in 1945 for his contribution in the field of ionized gases; and was promoted by ''Centre national de la recherche scientifique'' (CNRS) from researcher to research director. In 1947, by the recommendation of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, he was appointed consultant to the Commisariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA). He has also been working as scientific consultant for some private companies in France and in the U.K., '' la Société Quartz and Silice'' among others. Influenced by Langevin and Joliot-Curie, both
French communist party The French Communist Party (, , PCF) is a Communism, communist list of political parties in France, party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its Member of the European Parliament, MEPs sit with The Left in the ...
members, as well as the communist dominant French Resistance movement during the german occupation of the WWII, Wang was also involved in the social life in Paris. In 1949 he was elected president of Association of Chinese students in France - a progressive association regrouping the left-wing Chinese students - disbanded in the fall 1952 by the French government under the global anti-communist waves and at the request of the
Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
's government withdrawn to Taiwan in the late 1940s.


Career in China

With his sympathy for the communist movement in China, Wang moved back to
People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
in 1956, seven years after the communists took control and seven years before France formally recognized it. Wang's return to China, as the return of many other western-educated scientists at the same period, was highly anticipated and celebrated by the highest level communist leaders, they saw on him the key to build up a crucial part of the young regime's national defense system - sonar - dubbed as "the underwater great wall". Wang entered the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), where he was elected as academician in 1957, served as associate director of Institute of Electronics in charge of the underwater acoustics research. In 1964, he helped set up the Institute of Acoustics (IOA) and served as its director. Approved by the Chairman
Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
and Premier
Zhou Enlai Zhou Enlai ( zh, s=周恩来, p=Zhōu Ēnlái, w=Chou1 Ên1-lai2; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was a Chinese statesman, diplomat, and revolutionary who served as the first Premier of the People's Republic of China from September 1954 unti ...
, 100 undergraduate students were picked by CAS even before their graduation from three most prestigious colleges of the time -
Peking University Peking University (PKU) is a Public university, public Types of universities and colleges in China#By designated academic emphasis, university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peop ...
,
Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...
and Che Kiang University - to form Wang Dezhao's research team. Wang wrote textbooks, trained the young team personally and set the stage for their research career, while leading the experiments on and under the
South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...
. Wang survived the
Culture Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
(1966-1976) during which the IOA was dismantled, while himself was deprived of all positions and subjected to humiliations, confiscation of property, tortures, custody. After
Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...
seized power in the aftermath of Mao's era in 1977, Wang wrote a long letter urging Deng to put the IOA and his team back on track. He obtained an immediate favorable response. Through his retirement in 1984, Wang supported his students to succeed in various basic research subjects, among others: # on the normal mode theory; # on the theory of horizontal coherence of signal field in shallow water; # on the relationship between sound field and bottom-reflection-loss in shallow water; # on the theory of turning-point convergence-zones in deep underwater sound channels in the South China Sea; # on the effects of
internal wave Internal waves are gravity waves that oscillate within a fluid medium, rather than on its surface. To exist, the fluid must be stratified: the density must change (continuously or discontinuously) with depth/height due to changes, for example, in ...
s on the underwater sound propagation. In addition, a series of advanced defense and civil sonar products were also developed. One of the most important was the Bottom-Fixed Underwater Acoustic Surveillance System designed, developed and manufactured by Wang and his students. Along with scientific papers, Wang has authored with his students English-Chinese, French-Chinese scientific lexicons of acoustical terms and, in 1981, a treatise entitled ''Underwater Acoustics''. Wang served several terms as representative in China's
National People's Congress The National People's Congress (NPC) is the highest organ of state power of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The NPC is the only branch of government in China, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs from the Sta ...
and as member in standing committee of
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is a political advisory body in the People's Republic of China and a central part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s United front (China), united front system. Its members adv ...
. In the 1980s, he re-established the Association of Old Students from France and served as Chairman for one term; he also petitioned to create the Middle School affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, known as Zhongguancun Middle School today, and served as honorific head of school.


Awards

*1945 : ''Prix Hughes'' awarded by ''Académie des Sciences'' for his research in ionized gases *1980 : ''Médaille étrangère'' by French Acoustical Society *1992 : ''
Officier de la Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and civil. Currently consisting of five classes, it was ...
'' awarded by François Mitterrand - ''Président de la République'', decorated by Hubert Curien - Minister of Research *1982, 1989 : National Natural Science Award *1982 : Prize for Important Scientific and Technological Achievements *1997 :
Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize The Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (HLHL, ) is a Hong Kong–based non-government organisation which annually bestows prizes upon Chinese scientists. It was established on 30 March 1994, with funds donated from the charitable foundations of Ho Sin ...
in Physics


Publications and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wang, Dezhao 1905 births 1998 deaths Acousticians Beijing Normal University alumni ESPCI Paris alumni Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Physicists from Jiangsu Scientists from Lianyungang Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research