Webinar of Don Salisbury e Xiaodong Yin, June 16, 3 p.m. on Science in China

[ICTP/infopoint - Emili Sabina]

ILAS - SISSA Interdisciplinary Lab for Advanced Studies and the Max 
Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin are pleased to 
invite you to participate in the joint webinar:

*"Confucianism, the May Fourth Movement and the T. S. Chang's role in 
the quantisation of*

*gauge field theory"*

delivered on zoom by *Donald Salisbury, Austin College Physics 
Department, Sherman, Texas, USA and Xiaodong Yin, Physics Department, *

*Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.*

*Thursday, june 16, 2022 at 3 p.m. CET*

*Abstract:* Chinese students studying abroad in the first half of the 
twentieth century played an important role in the emergence of modern

physics in China. T. S. Chang was born in 1915 in Zhejiang Province in 
eastern China. His father, Zhang Dongsun obtained his degree

in philosophy in Japan and had been an active supporter of the 
student-led May Fourth Movement of 1919. The father advocated a fusion

of Confucianist government by sages and limited democratic structure. He 
had a profound impact on the young Chang, and we are just

now initiating an investigation into the possible influence of his ideas 
and actions and of the general social and cultural environment

on the young physicist, who obtained his doctoral degree at Cambridge 
University in 1936. After visiting with several world-renowned

scientific masters including Niels Bohr, Chang returned to teach from 
1939 to 1945 at Chongqing Central University where in relative

isolation he commenced his groundbreaking study of constrained 
Hamiltonian dynamics. There followed a prolonged contact with Paul Dirac,

including a stay with him in 1947 in Princeton. We will outline Chang’s 
contributions related to the emerging quantum electrodynamical

gauge field theory and Dirac’s altered commutator algebra.

This webinar is the fifth of a series of webinars delivered by leading 
scholars in history and philosophy of science. The first seminar took place

on January 20 2022, given by Michel Janssen on the "Evo-Devo of 
Scientific Knowledge"; the second one was given by Matteo Valleriani

on "From the quadrivium to modern science"; the third by Giulia Rispoli 
on "Anthropocene Markers: Contexts and Narratives"; the fourth

by Hanoch Gutfreund on "The Physics of Neural Networks – A Historical 
Perspective".

These seminars are meant as an opportunity for students, post-docs, and 
researchers to broaden their cultural perspectives on the scientific

enterprise and as a prelude to the conference “The Evolution of 
Knowledge” that SISSA will host July 14-16 2022. The conference is 
organised

jointly with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the 
Chinese Academy of Science and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The seminars can be joined at the link below: we strongly recommend 
using a login name on zoom which can be easily identified

(ideally: Name Surname) by the moderator and to mute your microphone.

LINK ZOOM only for the fourth seminar:

Stefano Ruffo is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: SISSA_MPIWG Webinar Series Don Salisbury and Xiaodong Yin

Time: Jun 16, 2022 02:30 PM Rome

Join Zoom Meeting

https://sissa-it.zoom.us/j/84870239076?pwd=SjQxMU9IRVF3M0xuT3hqbWNDckFKQT09

Meeting ID: 848 7023 9076

Passcode: 280194

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