Wen-yuan Qian

Wen-yuan Qian (; 14 April 1936 – 21 August 2003) was an American professor of history who taught at Blackburn College and MacMurray College.

Early life and education

Qian was born in Shanghai. He studied physics at Peking University, graduating in 1959. During the Cultural Revolution, he was branded an "ideological counter-revolutionary." In 1980, the government of the People's Republic of China sent Qian to the United States to continue his studies while his wife and daughter remained in China. In 1983, he graduated from Northwestern University with a Master of Arts in history. The work was framed as a challenge to Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, He believed that political conditions, particularly the imperial examination system, stymied the development of modern science in dynastic China. Qian saw the neglect of formal logic and rigorous proof as a central cause in the failure to develop modern science. At the time, Qian's thesis was considered controversial among sinologists. Victor H. Mair called The Great Inertia an "arching cry of a thoughtful critic from within the Chinese tradition addressed to the enthusiastic advocate from without."

In 1988, Qian graduated from the University of Michigan with a doctorate in history and began teaching history at Blackburn College the same year. From 1992 to 2002, he taught history at MacMurray College. Qian died in 2003 in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Works