Tsien Hsue-shen or Qian Xuesen, 钱学森 (born 1911) is a scientist who was a major figure in the missile and space programs of both the United States and People's Republic of China.
Tsien was the co-founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and became the "Father of Chinese Rocketry" (or "King of Rocketry") when he returned to China after being accused of being a communist by the United States government during the red scare of the 1950s.
Tsien Hsue-shen was born in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. He left Hangzhou at the age of three when his father obtained a post in the Ministry of Education. In August of 1935 Tsien Hsue-shen left China on a Boxer Rebellion Scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1936 Tsien Hsue-shen went to the California Institute of Technology to commence graduate studies on the referral of Theodore von Karman. Tsien obtained his doctorate in 1939 and would remain at CIT for twenty years, ultimately becoming the Goddard Professor and establishing a reputation as one of the leading rocket scientists in the US.
During World War II he worked with the US military ballistic missile program as a designer. After the war he served in the United States Army as a Lieutenant Colonel. Tsien Hsue-shen was sent by the Army to Germany and was part of the team that examined captured German V-2 rockets.
In 1945 Tsien Hsue-shen married the daughter of one of Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek's leading military strategists.
Soon after Tsien applyied for US citizenship in 1950, allegations were made that he was a communist and his security clearance was revoked. The Federal Bureau of Investigation located a 1938 US Communist Party document with his name on it. Tsien Hsue-shen found himself unable to pursue his career and within two weeks announced plans to return to mainland China. After his announcement the US government wavered between deporting him and refusing to allow his departure due to his knowledge. Tsien Hsue-shen became the subject of five years of secret diplomacy and negotiation between the United States and PRC. During this time he lived under virtual house arrest. Tsien found himself in conflict with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service including an arrest for carrying secret documents which ultimately turned out to be simple logarithmic tables. During his incarceration Tsien received support from his colleagues at Cal-Tech including Cal-Tech President Lee DuBridge who flew to Washington to argue Tsien's case.
In 1955 Tsien was deported from the United States and immediately went to work as head of the Chinese missile program as soon as he arrived in China. Tsien deliberately left his research papers behind when he left the United States. Tsien joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1958.
Tsien established the Institute of Mechanics and began to retrain Chinese engineers in the techniques he had learned in the United States and retool the infrastructure of the Chinese program. Within a year Tsien submitted a proposal to the PRC government to establish a ballistic missile program. This proposal was accepted and Tsien was named the first director of the program in late 1956. By 1958 Tsien had finalized the plans of the Dong Feng missile which was first successfully launched in 1964 just prior to China's first successful nuclear weapon's test. Tsien's program was also responsible for the development of the widespread Silkworm missile.
In 1979 Tsien was awarded Cal-Tech's Distinguished Alumni Award. In the early 1990s the filing cabinets containing Tsien's research work was offered to him by Cal-Tech. At first Tsien refused but was finally convinced to accept the work by his former colleagues. These works became the foundation for the Tsien Library at Xian Jiatong University.
Tsien retired in 1991 and has maintained a low public profile.
The PRC government launched it's manned space program in 1992 and used Tsien's research as the basis for the Long March rocket which succesfully launched the Shenzhou V mission in October of 2003. The elderly Tsien was able to watch China's first manned space mission on television from his hospital bed.