Tsien Hsue-shen
3 min readTsien Hsue-shen（born December 11，1911）is a scientist who was a major figure in the missile and space programs of both the United States and People’s Republic of China（PRC）.
Tsien was a co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology，and became the“Father of Chinese Rocketry”（or“King of Rocketry”）when he returned to China after being accused of being a communist by the United States government during the red scare of the 1950s the same way Wu Ningkun was accused of being an American spy in mainland China.
Asteroid 3763 Qianxuesen was named after him.
Early Life and Education
Tsien Hsue-shen was born in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.He left Hangzhou at the age of three when his father obtained a post in the Ministry of Education.He graduated from Chiao Tung University（currently Shanghai JiaotongUniversity）in 1934 and in August of 1935 Tsien Hsue-shen left China on a Boxer Rebellion Scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1936 Tsien Hsue-shen went to the California Institute of Technology to commence graduate studies on the referral of Theodore von Karman.Tsien obtained his doctorate in 1939 and would remain at CalTech for 20 years，ultimately becoming the Goddard Professor and establishing a reputation as one of the leading rocket scientists in the United States.
In the United States
In 1943，Tsien and two others in the CalTech rocketry group drafted the first document to use the name Jet Propulsion Laboratory；it was a proposal to the Army to develop missiles in response to Germany’s V-2 rocket.This led to the Private A，which flew in 1944；and later the Corporal，the WAC Corporal，etc.
After World War II he served in the United States Army as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Tsien Hsue-shen was sent by the Army to Germany and was part of the team that examined captured German V-2 rockets.
Soon after Tsien applied for U.S.citizenship in 1950，allegations were made that he was a communist and his security clearance was revoked.Tsien Hsue-shen became the subject of five years of secret diplomacy and negotiation between theUnited States and PRC.During this time he lived under virtual house arrest.Tsien found himself in conflict with the U.S.Immigration and Naturalization Service including an arrest for carrying secret documents which ultimately turned out to be simple logarithmic tables.During his incarceration Tsien received support from his colleagues at Caltech including Caltech President Lee DuBridge who flew to Washington to argue Tsien’s case.
Return to China
In 1955 Tsien was released and deported from the United States as a part of post-Korean war negotiations to free American prisoners of war held by China.He went towork as head of the Chinese missile program immediately upon his arrival in China.Tsien deliberately left his research papers behind when he left the United States.
Tsien joined the Communist Party of China in 1958.
Tsien established the Institute of Mechanics and began to retrain Chinese engineers in the techniques he had learned in the United States and retool the infrastructure of the Chinese program.Within a year Tsien submitted a proposal to establish a ballistic missile program.This proposal was accepted and Tsien was named the first director of the program in late 1956.By 1958 Tsien had finalized the plans of the Dongfeng missile which was first successfully launched in 1964 just prior to China’s first successful nuclear weapon’s test.Tsien’s program was also responsible for the development of the widespread Silkworm missile.
Tsien retired in 1991 and has maintained a low public profile in Beijing.
China launched its manned space program in 1992 and used Tsien’s research as the basis for the Long March rocket which successfully launched the Shenzhou V mission in October of 2003.The elderly Tsien was able to watch China’s first manned space mission on television from his hospital bed.
