Professor of History Zuoyue Wang has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the most influential general scientific organization in the United States. The title is one of the highest professional honors for a scientist or historian of science and is an honor bestowed on members by their peers.
Wang was selected “for distinguished and influential contributions to the historical understanding of Chinese and Chinese-American science and scientists and their role in global politics.”
A prolific author, Wang has written more than 50 scholarly articles and chapters contributing to understanding the important role of collaboration across borders, diplomacy through science, and the scientific contributions of Chinese scientists in both China and America. His book “In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America” was published in both English and Chinese (Rutgers University Press, 2008; Chinese edition: Peking University Press, 2011).
In 2016, “Inside Science” of the American Institute of Physics interviewed Wang on camera about the role of Chinese American scientists from the 1940s to the present.
In an interview with Cal Poly Pomona’s news website, PolyCentric, he noted, “Science is international. Scientists are working on issues that are really important to the world like climate change.” Until recently, around 80 percent of Chinese scientists who came to the United States to study have stayed in America and made important contributions, he added.
Earlier this year, he travelled to China, where he conducted research for a book on Chinese American scientists and delivered a series of lectures at Tsinghua University in Beijing on the history of U.S.-China scientific interactions in areas such as climate change and nuclear arms control.
Wang joined Cal Poly Pomona in 1999. He has also taught as a visiting professor in the last several summers at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, and a year as the Hixon-Riggs Visiting Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Harvey Mudd College.
This year’s 443 AAAS Fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal “Science” on Nov. 29. Wang was selected by the AAAS Section (L) History and Philosophy of Science. New fellows will be recognized at the AAAS Fellows Forum during the 2020 AAAS Annual Meeting in Seattle in February.
The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Each steering group reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and a final list is forwarded to the AAAS Council, which votes on the aggregate list.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine; Science Signaling; a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances; Science Immunology; and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes more than 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world.