Getting lost in the ‘Map of physics’

Abstract

I appreciated your news article on the massive growth in high-quality science now coming out of China (August pp14-15). However, I have been meeting excellent Chinese-born scientists ever since I completed my doctorate in Cambridge in 1959. When teaching a short course at Oxford University while on sabbatical leave in 1986, I asked some outstanding Chinese students to explain the secret of their scientific acumen. It was simple: only the best students were allowed to apply for foreign bursaries, and for every place at Oxford there were 200 applicants. The Chinese students I met were the crème de la crème.After the Second World War, many noteworthy Chinese-born scientists published papers with European, US or other non-Chinese scientists as co-authors. But 20 years ago, this trickle of "good" Chinese-authored papers was swamped by a flood of mediocrity, with most of these submissions being rejected by vigilant editors. Since "retiring" some five years ago, however, I have been spending much more time reading the relevant scientific literature, and I have noticed that over the past few years, the standard of research in China has got better. This improvement is commensurate with a drive to encourage Chinese scientists living abroad to move back to China and the development of firstclass research facilities across the country.So yes, we are now witnessing an extraordinary flowering of original Chinese science. But this is solidly based on standards established by an older generation of Chinese scientists who have strong ties (often dating from the 1960s) not only to the major scientific institutions of the West, but also to colleagues in Japan, India and Korea.