Qian Xuesen (1911-2009)

摘要

Perhaps no one better embodies the irony of the cold-war era than Qian Xuesen, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, the Chinese rocket scientist who died on 31 October at the age of 97. Widely acknowledged for his work on rocket propulsion and his contribution to the US missile programme during the Second World War, Qian was deported at the height of the McCarthyism hysteria on dubious charges of being a communist, only to become the driving force behind Chinas rise to the first rank of space nations.