A Walk in Time and Space: My Journey as a Strategic Scientist

Abstract

This article depicts my life and career over the past decades, beginning with my birth in 1927 and ending in my two dreams yet to be realized. This article focuses on my school years during wartime and my work with Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) from 1951 on—serving as Director of SHAO during 1981–1993 and a Member of CAS since 1980—and shares some social activities I've been involved in for the benefits of women and children. Special focus is given to the endeavors of building one of the world's most precise Universal Time systems in the 1960s, a very long baseline interferometry network, a satellite laser ranging research station during the 1970s–1990s, and the 65-m Radio Telescope in the early twenty-first century; developing astro-geodynamics in China and advancing the Asia-Pacific Space Geodynamics Program in the late twentieth century; and leading SHAO in international cooperation while serving as Chair of the International Astronomical Union Finance Committee during 1985–1988, the IAU Vice-President during 1988–1994, and a foreign fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of Britain in 1985. This autobiographical account should, hopefully, serve its purpose of offering a glimpse of me and my lifelong interaction with time and space.