Hu Xiansu



Hu Xiansu or Hu Hsen-Hsu (, 24 May 1894 – 16 July 1968), courtesy name Buzeng, was a Chinese botanist and scholar. He was the founder of plant taxonomy in China and a pioneer of modern botany and paleobotany research in the country. One of his most notable achievements as a botanist was the identification of the living fossil Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood) in the 1940s, which previously thought to have been extinct for over 150 million years. This has been considered by some in the scientific community as one of the greatest botanical discoveries of the 20th century.

Outside botany, Hu also made significant contributions in the field of literary critique and education. In 1922, in opposition of the New Culture Movement that promoted vernacular literature, Hu co-founded The Critical Review, a major Chinese-language journal which advocated the preservation of Chinese classical literature. From 1940 to 1944, Hu served as the inaugural president of National Chung Cheng University, what is now mainly Jiangxi Normal University. Targeted as an intellectual during the Cultural Revolution, Hu Xiansu endured repeated struggle sessions, the stress of which likely contributed to his fatal heart attack in Beijing on 16 July, 1968.

Early life
Hu Xiansu was born on 24 May 1894 (20 of the forth month in the lunar calendar) in Nanchang, Jiangxi to Hu Chengbi and Chen Caizhi. His family belonged to a lineage of scholar-officials. Considered a prodigy, he read the Three Character Classic and the Thousand Character Classic at the age of three and knew thousands of characters, and at four he started to learn the Analects and knew more than ten thousand characters.

Hu's great-grandfather Hu Jiayu was a high-official in the Qing Court. Hu Xiansu was given the courtesy name of Buzeng by his father, indicated his family's desire for Hu to emulate his great-grandfather's success.

Hu's father died in 1902. He was raised by his mother and relatives thereafter.

Education
The imperial examinations were abolished in 1905, and in 1906 Hu went to the Hongdu Middle School in Nanchang and started modern education. Hu studied a preparatory course at the Imperial University of Peking (now Peking University) in 1909. In October 1911 the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty, discontinuing the operations of the university and ending Hu's studies there.

Hu went to the United States in December 1912 and enrolled in the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley). During his years in Berkeley, Hu became an active member of the newly founded Science Society of China and joined the editorial board of the Society's journal Science. At the same time, Hu read English literature extensively.

In 1914 Hu befriended Hu Shih in the United States, developing a lifelong friendship. In May 1916, Hu graduated with honours in botany and became members of the honour societies of Sigma Xi and Phi Beta Kappa. In 1918, he became a faculty member of Nanking Higher Teacher's School (now mainly Nanjing University).

Hu went to the United States again in 1923 and studied in Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in 1925. His doctoral dissertation, under the supervision of dendrologist John George Jack, was the first comprehensive survey of plants in the whole of China.

Career
In 1920 and 1921, Hu conducted large-scale plant collections in Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian. In 1921, Hu and zoologist Ping Chih founded the first biology department in Chinese public universities (previously, only missionary universities in China had biology departments). In 1922, Hu, Ping, and Yang Xingfo founded the Institute of Biology of the Science Society of China, the first biological research institute in China.

In 1923, Hu and colleagues published the college-level textbook Advanced Botany, the first such textbook compiled by Chinese scholars. It became widely used in universities around China.

In 1926, Hu resigned from the Department of Biology of Southeast University and became a full-time research fellow at the Institute of Biology of the Science Society of China.

In 1928, Hu named the new genus Sinojackia, becoming the first Chinese to describe a new genus. The genus was named after his Harvard advisor John George Jack.

In 1928, Hu moved to Beijing and co-founded the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology. The Fan Institute was named after Fan Yuan-Lien, an important educator and philanthropist. With long term financial support from the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture, the Fan Institute developed into a major scientific institute in China. Hu directed the botanical branch of the Fan Institute and from 1932 served as the director of the Institute until 1949. Meanwhile, he taught part-time in the biology departments of Peking University and Beijing Normal University.

In 1933, Hu played a leading role in the founding of the Botanical Society of China, serving as its second president.

In 1934, Hu founded the Lushan Forest Botanical Garden in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. In the same year he named the new plant family Torricelliaceae, becoming the first Chinese botanist to describe a new family. Over his career, Hu named and described several hundred new species of plants.

Through Hu's influence, the Lushan Forest Botanical Garden established wide exchange networks with botanical gardens and research institutes around the world. In 1936, fearing for the likelihood of a potential outbreak of war in northern China, Hu established the Yunnan Institute of Agriculture and Forest (later renamed Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences) in southwestern China.

Between 1938 and 1940, Hu co-authored The Miocene Flora of Shandong Province, China with Ralph W. Chaney, it was the first work investigating China's Cenozoic fossil plants, and is considered the cornerstone of current knowledge of Asian Cenozoic plants.

In the 1940s, Hu and Wan-Chun Cheng identified the modern existence of the genus Metasequoia in Sichuan, naming the newly discovered species of Metasequoia the glyptostroboides, which was previously known only from fossils. The name of this species was derived from its resemblance to the Chinese swamp cypress (Glyptostrobus).

Between 1940 and 1944, he served as the inaugural president (principal) of the National Chung Cheng University (now mainly Jiangxi Normal University).

Later career
In the 1950s, Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko's anti-Mendelian doctrines in genetics known as Lysenkoism dominated biological science and agricultural practices in China. The Mendelian doctrine and its practitioners were shunned. Despite this environment, Hu was openly critical of Lysenkoism, being the first major academic in China to publicly denounce it as pseudoscience. After refusing to publicly apologise and rescind the statements against Lysenkoism, Hu was publicly denounced by the state, and the textbook which he wrote containing related material was banned. Later on Hu was not elected as an Academician to the Chinese Academy of Sciences despite his contributions to Chinese sciences, something partially attributed to his opposition to Lysenkoism.

Between 1950 and 1968, he served as a researcher at the Institute of Plant Taxonomy and the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Death and legacy
In May 1968 during the midst of the Cultural Revolution, Hu's workplace informed him that his salary had been suspended. His home was repeatedly ransacked; the books, calligraphy, and paintings he had collected throughout his lifetime were confiscated by the workplace.

As an intellectual, one of the groups targeted during the Cultural Revolution, Hu endured repeated struggle sessions, in which he was ordered to wear a Kuomintang flag to signify his past relation. On 15 July, he was notified to go to his workplace the next day to attend extended struggle sessions, the stress that the news caused on Hu was massive; in the early morning of 16 July 1968, Hu was found dead on his bed, having suffered a heart attack. Hu's funeral was held in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery on 15 May 1979, during which academics and officials from across the country came to pay their respects, and Hu's workplace posthumously reinstated his suspended salary. He was buried at the Metasequoia forest in the Pine and Cypress district of the Lushan Botanical Garden at Mount Lu on 15 May 1984.

In the aftermath of his death, interest towards Hu's works reduced. In the 1990s, interest in Hu's works reemerged.

Hu is considered one of the foremost contributors to Chinese sciences in the 20th century. The discovery of the Metasequoia glyptostroboides in particular is considered one of the most significant in botany within the 20th century.

Hu helmed the effort advocating the creation of a national botanical garden in China, which would eventually become the China National Botanical Garden, earning him the title "father" of the project upon its eventual completion in 2022.