Chi Che Wang

Chi Che Wang (; October 3, 1894 – October 10, 1979), also known as Wang Chi-Lian, was a Chinese biochemist and college professor. Wang was one of the first Chinese women to make a career in American higher education and scientific research.

Early life and education Wang was born in Suzhou, one of the five daughters of a government official father, Wong Song-Wei, and a social reformer(women's rights/young girl equal education movement) mother, (王謝長達). She was a member of "the first batch of women students the Chinese government has ever sent abroad". She attended the Laura Haygood School in Suzhou, spent two years at a girls' school in Japan, prepared for college at the Walnut Hill School in Massachusetts, and graduated from Wellesley College in 1914, one of the school's earliest Asian alumnae. She earned a master's degree (1916) and a Ph.D. (1918) in chemistry and nutrition, from the University of Chicago, with a dissertation titled "Chemistry of Chinese Preserved Eggs and Chinese Edible Birds' Nests". She had a postdoctoral appointment at Johns Hopkins University.

Her sister Chi Nyok Wang attended Mount Holyoke College and returned to China, where she was principal of a girls' school in Suzhou.

Career Wang taught at the University of Chicago during and after her doctoral studies, and is considered the first Chinese woman to serve on the faculty of an American college. on projects involving childhood metabolism, and in the 1940s she worked briefly for the Northwestern Yeast Company. She returned to academia from 1943 to 1946, as an assistant professor of physiology at Northwestern University Medical School. After a few years, she took a position with the Mayo Clinic. She was back at Northwestern University from 1950 to 1953, as associate professor biochemistry. She retired in 1961. and one of the founding members of the Chicago Chinese Women's Club. She was elected to membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1922. She was a member of the Society for Research in Child Development, the American Society of Biological Chemists and the American Chemical Society. Journal of Biological Chemistry, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, and American Journal of Diseases of Children. Her findings were also reported in syndicated news features.

Selected publications

"Chinese Preserved Eggs; Pidan" (1916, with Katharine Blunt) "A Comparison of the Metabolism of Some Mineral Constituents of Cow's Milk and of Breast Milk in the Same Infant" (1924, with David B. Witt and Augusta R. Felcher) "Studies on the Metabolism of Obesity, II. Basal Metabolism" (1924, with Solomon Strouse and M. Dye) "Metabolism of Undernourished Children III. Urinary Nitrogen with Special Reference to Creatinine" (1926, with Ruth Kern and Margaret Frank) "Metabolism of Undernourished Children VII. Effect of High and Low Protein Diets on the Nitrogen and Caloric Balance of Undernourished Children" (1928, with Jean E. Hawks and Mildred Kaucher) "Basal Metabolism of Twenty-One Chinese Children Reared or Born and Reared in the United States" (1932) "Metabolism of Adolescent Girls, III. The Excretion of Creatinine and Creatine" (1936, with Ida Genther and Corinne Hogden) "Basal Metabolism and Preformed and Total Creatinine in Urine of Seventy Children" (1939)

Personal life Wang became a United States citizen in 1947, under the provisions of the Magnuson Act. A park in Chicago was named for Wang in 2004.