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Dannie Peng

A renowned mathematician who is also part of China’s Qian clan – a surname linked in the annals of Chinese scientific history to national pioneers in science and engineering – has become the latest US-based scientist to return to China.
After more than 40 years in the United States, Qian Hong has left his endowed professorship at the University of Washington to join the prestigious and private Westlake University in eastern China.
Qian’s appointment last month as a full-time chair professor with the university’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, reversed a long-standing family tradition of moving to the US and drew more attention than usual in China’s scientific community.
Generations of Qians have shaped the country’s pursuit of modernity and few names carry as much weight.
Qian’s grandfather, Qian Baojun, was a pioneer who studied in 1930s Britain before building China’s first chemical fibre programmes. Qian Xuesen is renowned as the father of its rocket programme, while Qian Sanqiang was a founder in atomic research.
However, for decades, many of the clan’s brightest scientific minds have left for the United States where they became stars in American universities, often never to return. Among them was the Nobel-winning physicist Roger Y. Tsien, a nephew of Qian Xuesen.


Qian Hong, who was born in Shanghai in 1960, earned his bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from Peking University in 1982 before pursuing his doctoral studies in biochemistry and biophysics at Washington University in St Louis.
From 1990 to 1994, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon and the California Institute of Technology, mainly conducting studies on the thermodynamics and kinetics of protein folding.
In 1997, Qian joined the applied mathematics department as assistant professor at the University of Washington in Seattle – where he also held an adjunct bioengineering appointment at its school of medicine – rising to the Olga Jung Wan endowment.
Qian’s main research interest lies in the mathematical modelling of biological systems, particularly in terms of stochastic mathematics – a branch of the discipline that deals with random variables – and nonequilibrium statistical thermodynamics.
He has introduced several mathematically supported concepts, “laying a solid applied mathematics foundation for a unified theoretical biology framework”, according to his page on the Westlake University website.
These research results were published in 2021 by Springer as the monograph “Stochastic Chemical Reaction Systems in Biology”, co-authored by Qian and Ge Hao, a professor at Peking University.
Qian was associate editor of several journals published in the US by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the world’s largest scientific society devoted to applied mathematics.
He also served on the editorial committees of multiple journals in the fields of biophysical chemistry, systems biology and quantitative biology and was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2010.
The following year, Qian co-founded the Gordon Research Conference on Stochastic Physics in Biology, a series of international scientific meetings focusing on the intersection of statistical physics and biology.




In 2019, Qian paid tribute to his grandfather, writing in a memorial article that although Qian Baojun came from a background in chemistry and chemical engineering, he placed great emphasis on mathematics and physics.
The senior Qian, who earned his master’s degree in textile chemistry in Britain, established China’s first specialised chemical fibres programme at the Shanghai-based Donghua University – formerly the China Textile University – in 1954.
After the Cultural Revolution, Qian Baojun would find any possible chance to invite his father and aunt – both specialists in abstract mathematics – to work on stochastic models of polymers, his grandson recalled in the article.
“Looking back now, I realise that all of this had a profound underlying influence on me,” he wrote.
Qian is one of a growing number of prominent researchers to return to China, many after establishing themselves in the US over many years, against the backdrop of a political climate that is becoming increasingly hostile towards Chinese scientists.
In November, Lin Wenbin – one of the founders and leading figures in the cutting-edge field of metal-organic frameworks – left the University of Chicago to join Westlake University.
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Return of pioneering scientists’ latest generation prompts more attention than usual among a growing trend


Return of pioneering scientists’ latest generation prompts more attention than usual among a growing trend.


Mathematician Qian Hong, son of top scientific clan, leaves US for China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Return of pioneering scientists’ latest generation prompts more attention than usual among a growing trend

Return of pioneering scientists’ latest generation prompts more attention than usual among a growing trend