Wang Zhenyi

Chinese astronomer, mathematician, and poet

• Born: 1768
• Birthplace: Nanjing, China
• Died: 1797
• Place of death: Nanjing, China

Wang Zhenyi’s promotion of the Western, Sun-based calendar, as well as her research, experiments, and observations, contributed to China’s modern understanding of astronomical phenomena such as lunar and solar eclipses, equinoxes, and celestial mechanics. Her mathematics textbooks were written for broad access, and her poetry was praised for its strength, clarity of vision, and social compassion.

Early Life

Wang Zhenyi (wang jehn-YEE) was born to a scholarly, aristocratic Manchu family in the large town of Nanjing, China. Originally from the neighboring province of Anhui to the west, her well-educated grandfather, Wang Zhefu, had worked as county governor and prefect in the Nanjing region. Her father, Wang Xichen, had failed the imperial examination that would have set him on a course similar to that of an administrator. Instead, he became a physician, publishing the results of his clinical studies. No personal details have survived about Wang’s mother, an upper-class Manchu woman.

When Wang was a child, her grandfather and father encouraged her innate thirst for knowledge and allowed her to learn to read and peruse the first volumes of her grandfather’s seventy-five bookcases. Supporting a girl’s formal education was unusual for a Chinese family of the time, and it gave Wang uncommon access to the world of learning. She would prove to be exceptionally intelligent. As a young Manchu woman, Wang was spared the torturous practice of foot-binding inflicted on upper-class Han Chinese women.

Wang’s grandfather died in 1779, when Wang was eleven years old. She traveled with her paternal grandmother Dong and her father to Jilin in Manchuria, where her grandfather was given an ornate funeral. While in Jilin, Wang enjoyed unusual access to books and learning as well as physical activities. With three upper-class girlfriends, and under the tutelage of an older woman, Wang continued to read voraciously, and she quickly gained a superlative knowledge of literature and the natural sciences. She learned horse-riding and arrow-shooting (horseback-based martial arts) from a Mongolian general who took a liking to his unlikely female disciple. Wang became an expert markswoman and was rumored to have hit the target with every arrow shot while galloping on her horse.

In 1784 sixteen-year-old Wang returned south with her father, traversing Shaanxi province, crossing through Hubei province, and venturing south into Guangdong (Canton) before settling again in Nanjing. Wang gained a wide view of the Qing Dynasty, an opportunity afforded very few women of her generation.

At the age of twenty-five, unusually late for the time period, Wang married Zhan Mei, who was from her ancestral Anhui province. Their marriage is reported to have been happy, but they had no children.

Life’s Work

Wang Zhenyi’s contributions to astronomy were groundbreaking. Her treatise on the observation and calculation of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes—the one day in spring and fall, respectively, when there are exactly twelve hours each of day and night—accurately described the causes of the phenomenon and how to calculate its exact day each year.

Her work on lunar and solar eclipses was uncharacteristically based on an actual experiment, something very few of her Chinese male colleagues had ever thought of doing. To study the mechanics of an eclipse, when either the Sun covers the Moon at night or the Moon occludes the Sun during the day, Wang built her own scientific apparatus in a pavilion of her garden in Nanjing. She used a round table to represent the Earth; above the table, she attached a crystal lamp functioning as the Sun; a large round mirror on the side of the table (Earth) stood in for the Moon. Moving table, lamp, and mirror according to the real movement of Earth, Sun, and Moon, Wang could observe in her own pavilion the actual effects causing the eclipses of Sun and Moon. Her written work on the subject proved exceptionally accurate and furthered Chinese astronomical understanding.

Wang also affirmed the modern view of the Earth as a sphere and wrote on celestial mechanics affecting the movement of the Sun and the planets. Her meteorological studies concerned calculating the humidity in the atmosphere to arrive at better weather forecasts. Wang saw her work regarding the meteorological prediction of floods and droughts as a service to the farmers of China, who suffered much from these extreme weather conditions.

In the field of mathematics Wang showed a clear understanding of trigonometry, demonstrating an innate skill for abstract thought. Her popularizing textbooks on calculations, first published when she was twenty-four years old, were designed to enable beginners to gain a quicker understanding of multiplication and division. Her work demonstrated a clear grasp of the principles of mathematics, and she conveyed this clarity to her readers. She also wrote on problems in advanced mathematics that were at the cutting edge of the science of her day.

Wang Zhenyi enthusiastically embraced the Western Sun-based, or heliocentric, calendar. She praised the underlying principles that gave it accuracy and precision, appreciated its calculations, and she argued for its adoption in China. She opposed keeping the older, less accurate lunar calendar for the sake of tradition, and she argued for acceptance of new scientific and mathematical results and ideas.

Wang Zhenyi was also an accomplished poet whose work showed concern with the experiences of women and common people, and with her yearning for knowledge, traveling, and freedom. One of her earliest poems, which describes her journey to Jilin for her grandfather’s funeral, has been praised for its perception and insight. Often her poetic persona is that of a strong, adventurous woman who views, for example, the world from the perspective of the gods: looking down a mountain pass to the Huang He (Yellow River) in the plains below.

Wang’s poems, written during her travels with her father before her marriage, show a keen social compassion and understanding of the economic forces threatening the Qing Dynasty, which would lead to civil war in the next century. She wrote about peasant women and the callous indifference of the wealthy, who hoarded rice until it rotted, leaving many people to starve. She also criticized the ever-increasing tax burden that stifled rural development. Such political topics were unusual in women’s poetry of her time.

In 1797, at age twenty-nine, Wang died of natural causes. Shortly before her death she entrusted all of her manuscripts to her best woman friend, Qian Yuling. In 1803, Qian conveyed the manuscripts to her nephew Qian Yiji, who compiled Wang’s mathematics textbook Shusuan jiancun (eighteenth century; simple principles of calculation) and wrote a preface praising Wang’s intellectual achievements. After being transferred to Zhu Xuzeng, a Nanjing collector, most of Wang’s manuscripts were lost. Only her Defengting zhuji (eighteenth century; first collection of the Defeng Pavilion), four volumes of poetry, and the Jilin collection of essays appear to have survived. Most of her astronomical and other scientific work, in its original form, has been lost, and is thus known only through references by others.

Significance

Wang Zhenyi’s accomplishments as an astronomer modernized Chinese astronomical understanding. Her experiment-based research linked Chinese astronomy to that of the West, which had advanced significantly by the eighteenth century. Wang helped close a gap in scientific knowledge.

Wang’s work in meteorology was driven by a desire for the practical and beneficial applications of her weather forecasts, which led to her helping in the improvement of farming conditions. Furthermore, she preferred the scientifically superior Western calendar over the traditional Chinese model, demonstrating scientific openness and acceptance of results regardless of tradition or national origin.

Wang’s literary work created a misogynist opposition. Upon the self-financed publication of her poetry shortly before her untimely death in 1797, male critics showed their sexism when they tried to ridicule Wang’s accomplishments in poetry and extending into the field of science as well.

It took almost two centuries to appreciate the value of Wang’s work. In 1994, in appreciation of her astronomical research, a small crater on Venus was named Wang Zhenyi.

Bibliography

Liu, Naihe. “More than a Stargazer.” In Departed but Not Forgotten, edited by Bai Shoyi. Beijing: China International, 1984. Illustrated review of Wang’s life and her scientific and literary accomplishments. Quotes from her poetry and places her life in sociohistorical context.

Meschel, Susan V. “Teacher Keng’s Heritage: A Survey of Chinese Women Scientists.” Journal of Chemical Education 69 (September, 1992): 723-729. Illustrated survey of Wang’s life and accomplishments based on Naihe Liu’s study. Places Wang in the context of Chinese women scientists whose traditional cultural and social status is juxtaposed with the official policies of the People’s Republic of China.

Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China. 2d ed. New York: Norton, 1999. Most widely available book in English on modern Chinese history. Useful in providing background information on the lives Wang Zhenyi and more-conformist women led in the eighteenth century Qing Dynasty. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.

Xu, Zhentao, et al. East Asian Archaeoastronomy: Historical Records of Astronomical Observations of China, Japan, and Korea. Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach Science, 2000. Places Wang’s astronomical research and accomplishments in the context of Chinese astronomy. Highlights the innovative value of Wang’s observations, calculations, and theories. Illustrated.