Tsen-Hwang Shaw: Founder of Vertebrate Zoology in China
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RECOLLECTION Tsen-Hwang Shaw: Founder of Vertebrate Zoology in China Fuwen Wei1,2&, Dehua Wang1,2& 1
Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, China & Correspondence: [email protected] (F. Wei), [email protected] (D. Wang)
“The founder of vertebrate zoology in China; an erudite scholar of insect, fish, bird and mammal research; combining taxonomy and animal ecology, and pioneering in biostatistics.” These are memorial comments written by Chinese mammalogist Wuping Xia on the 15th anniversary of the death of Professor Tsen-Hwang Shaw (寿振黄, 1899–1964), which offers an overview of the academic contributions of Professor Shaw (Fig. 1). Professor Shaw was born in Zhejiang Province on February 4, 1899. Growing up in the countryside, he was acutely aware of the constrained circumstances of life in rural areas. To change the backwardness of the countryside in China, he went to National Nanjing Higher Normal School (which later became Southeast University) to study agriculture in 1917. After graduation in 1920, he started to teach biology in a middle school, and he soon realized that biology is the foundation of agriculture and decided to switch from agriculture to biology. In 1921, he was admitted to the Department of Biology at Southeast University at age 22. After receiving a BSc degree in 1925, he went to the United States for further study, and initially enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley and then Stanford University in 1926. He conducted his research on fish taxonomy under the supervision of the famous fish taxonomist D. S. Jordan. In August 1926, Shaw went to Hopkins Marine Station to conduct research on the life history of crustaceans. Later that year, he completed his thesis and obtained a master’s degree. He then returned to the University of California and engaged in research related to ornithology and zoology. In 1927, he successively visited different universities and museums in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and Washington to learn the techniques of museum display and taxidermy. The wide range of learning interests and rich research experience in different fields laid a solid foundation for Shaw’s future career. Professor Shaw returned to China in 1928. He served at Tsinghua University for eight years as a lecturer and then a professor, teaching courses such as comparative anatomy
© The Author(s) 2020
and ichthyology using textbooks written by himself. At the same time, he also worked as a technician of the Animal Department of the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology in Beijing (Fig. 2). After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he served as a research fellow and professor in the Committee for Animal Specimens of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Institute of Zoology of CAS. In 1957, he was appointed as a principal investigator and the director of the Mammalogical Research Division of the Institute of Zoology of CAS. In 1959, he served as the director of the Department of An
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