JOURNAL OF
CHEMICAL EDUCATION
LU-CH'IANG WU AFTER the proof of the present article had been graduated from Tsing Hua College, Peifiing, in June, read, a letter from China brought the sad news of the 1924, and was awarded scholarships, 1924-1929, for death of Dr. Wu on January 30, 1936, from typhoid, study in the United States. He came to the Massachuin the Chung-Sun hospital a t Canton. This is a severe setts Institute of Technology, and in due course was loss to scholarship. Dr. Wu's translations from Wei awarded the Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Po-yang, from Pao-fi'u-tzu, and from other Chinese Engineering in 1928 and the Doctor of Philosophy sources have done more than the work of any other degree in Organic Chemistry in 1931. He carried out man to make available to the West the source materials the research for the Doctor's degree under the direction of Chinese alchemy. They have supplied a basis for of the late Professor Samuel P. MuUiken on "The discussion, conjecture, and future study. They have Generic Characterization of Ketones of Order I." made a real beginning of a job which will take long to During the last two years of his graduate study he finish, and have made possible the addition of a new undertook and completed the difficult task of translating chapter to our histories of chemistry. into English the whole of the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i of Wei Po-yang. This work was written about 142 A.D., and is the earliest known treatise in any language which is devoted entirely to the subject of alchemy. Wu's translation of i t is the first translation of the whole of a Chinese alchemical treatise into a European language. During the same period he also translated a number of biographies from the Lieh Hsien Ch'zian chuan and an article on "The Origin and Evolution of the Doctrines of Yin-yang and Wu-hsing," by Ch'i-Ch'ao Liang, an article which throws much light upon the early development of Chinese scientific thought. The translations show a remarkable sense of English word values. Dr. Wu was widely read in English and was interested in the contemporary tendencies of Western philosophy. I have understood that he prepared a Chinese translation of one of the books of Bertrand Russell while he was a graduate student a t M. I. T. The translation into English of the fourth and sixteenth chapters of Pao-p'u-tzu were made after his return to China. After his return to China in 1931, Dr. Wu spent one year teaching chemistry a t the National Peking University, and then joined the Chemical Engineering Department of Sun Yatsen University a t Canton where he remained until the time of his death. Here he taught general chemistry, history of chemistry, biological chemistry, and food analysis. In 1933 he married SsuChuang Liang, the second daughter of the distinguished scholar, Ch'i-Ch'ao Liang. She had graduated from McGiU University and from the School of Library Service of Columbia University. A daughter survives Lu-Ch'iang Wu was born November 20, 1904, in him. At the time of his death he was engaged in transKaiping, Kuangtung, China, and received his early lating Kmyt's textbook of colloid chemistry, and, with education in Kueilin, Kuangsi, and in Canton. He one of his students, in writing a textbook of inorganic was the second son of Ting-Sun Wu, a learned man and chemistry in the Chinese language. president of the Koa-Min University in Canton. He TENNEY L.DAVIS
