In 1853, in Shanghai, China, a western missionary, Alexander Wylie, and a Chinese mathematician, Li Shanlan, formed a special group to translate western mathematical works into Chinese. Together they translated Augustus De Morgan's Elements of Algebra, several books by Elias Loomis, and nine volumes of Euclid's Elements [2]. The books Wylie and Li translated marked the beginning of the United States influence on Chinese mathematics.
This collaboration between western missionaries and Chinese scholars helped China shift from traditional mathematics to western mathematics. Elias Loomis, an American mathematician, wrote several of these translated textbooks, including Analytical Geometry and Differential and Integral Calculus, the latter of which represented the first book about calculus translated into Chinese. Loomis earned a strong reputation in China for four of his translated mathematics textbooks [12]. Through these translations, Li also coined a large number of mathematical terms that are still used in modern Chinese mathematics.
Later, the missionaries expanded the United States' influence on Chinese mathematics not only by translating American mathematics textbooks into Chinese but also by bringing Chinese students to America for higher education.
Chinese Students in America: The Beginning
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American missionaries helped the first Chinese student to graduate from an American university in 1849. Yung Wing, a graduate of Yale, later became a pioneer in promoting the educational exchange between China and America. He, as a pioneer in studying abroad, contributed a lot to making education opportunities in America for future generations.
This project, China: Beginning, will present how Yung Wing affected the first generation American-educated Chinese, and later how they helped the next generation of Chinese to study in America with the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship. It will also show how the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship advanced mathematics education in China.
Several American institutions highly influenced these mathematicians who received higher education in America, including Harvard University and the University of Chicago. They contributed to both Chinese and American mathematics through their Chinese graduates in not only mathematics pieces of knowledge but also knowledge in building a modern university department of mathematics. The individual lives of these Chinese mathematicians are explored here.
