The Scientific Archive

There were times when I had to put down my pen and sighed. 

But I love the subject, I do not give up.

(Zhenyi in Peterson 2000,  344, emphasis added) 

Wang Zhenyi’s literary work has been praised by scholars of the Qing dynasty, but her greatest contribution was in astronomy and the natural sciences, excelled in astronomy and mathematics. As Barbara Bennet Peterson has commented, one of her contributions was being able to describe her views of celestial phenomena in her article, "Dispute of the Procession of the Equinoxes." She was able to explain and simply prove how equinoxes move and then how to calculate their movement. She wrote many other articles such as "Dispute of Longitude and Stars" as well as "The Explanation of a Lunar Eclipse." She commented on the number of stars, revolving direction of the sun, the moon, and the planets Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Saturn as well as describing the relationship between lunar and solar eclipses. Not only did she study the research of other astronomers, but she was able to find her own original research. One of her experiments to study a lunar eclipse included placing a round table in a garden pavilion, to be a globe; she hung a crystal lamp on a cord from the ceiling beams, to be the sun. Then on one side of the table she had a round mirror as the moon. She moved these three objects as if they were the sun, earth, and moon according to astronomical principles. Her findings and observations were very accurate and recorded in her article, "The Explanation of a Solar Eclipse." (see Peterson 2000, 344)

Peterson has also commented that in the realm of mathematics, Zhenyi had mastered trigonometry and knew the Pythagorean theorem. She wrote an article called "The Explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem and Trigonometry," where she described a triangle and the relationship between the shorter leg of a right triangle, the long leg, and the triangle's hypotenuse all correctly. Following the pathway of her European contemporary women mathematicians, Zhenyi tried to make mathematical analysis and theorems, clear, understandable and accessible. Having read and admired Mei Wending’s book Principles of Calculation, she felt the need to rewrite it in simpler language, under the title The Musts of Calculation. This work later resulted in her book The Simple Principles of Calculation, which was published when he was twenty-four years old. Very much preceding Halmos’ automathography, Zhenyi wrote Beyond the Study of Mathematic, which was a rigorous self-reflexive piece of finding her way in the field of mathematical sciences. (see Peterson 2000, 344)

Overall, Zhenyi wrote six books on astronomy and mathematics but none of them have survived. However, three prefaces that she wrote for her works have been included in her Collection of the Defeng Pavillion (see Leung 1998, 231) 

References

Leung, Angela, Ki Che. 1998. ‘Wang Zhenyi’, translated by W. Zang. In Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: V. 1: The Qing Period, 1644-1911, edited by Lee, Lily XiaoHong, Clara Law and A.D. Stefanowska, 230-232. London and New York: Routledge.

Peterson, Bennet, Barbara. 2000. ‘Wang Zhenyi’ in Notable Women Of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century, edited by Barbara Bennett Petrson with He Hong Fei, Han Tie, Wang Ziyu and Zhang Guangyu, 341-346. New York: M. E. Sharp.