Dah-You Maa, friend and scholar

Abstract

Maa, Dah-You’s life as a scholar and a close friend of many both in China and North America is the theme. A number of his scholarly achievements from his UCLA and Harvard time, to the post-Cultural Revolution period, up to recent years, is reviewed. His two years as a research fellow at UCLA and Harvard which ended with his receiving his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1940 is detailed. Then began his life in Kunming during World War II where he was a professor in the E.E. Department of the National S.-W. Associated University. He returned to Beijing and became the first Dean of Engineering in the National Peking University (now Beijing University). During the Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976, he was under house arrest. His sponsorship of the first All-China Acoustics Conference after the Cultural Revolution in 1979 heralded his position as China’s leading acoustician. Excerpts from his many letters through the years complete the presentation.