Kerson Huang (; 15 March 1928 – 1 September 2016) was a

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimen ...

and translator. Huang was born in

Nanning Nanning (; ; za, Namzningz) is the capital and largest city by population of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in Southern China. It is known as the "Green City" because of its abundance of lush subtropical foliage. Located in the South of ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and grew up in

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. He earned a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in physics from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) in 1950 and 1953, respectively. He served as an instructor at MIT from 1953 to 1955, and subsequently spent two years as a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

. After returning to the MIT faculty in 1957, Huang became an authority on

statistical physics Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the Mathematics, mathematical tools for dealing with large populations ...

, and worked on

Bose–Einstein condensation Bose–Einstein may refer to: * Bose–Einstein condensate ** Bose–Einstein condensation (network theory) * Bose–Einstein correlations * Bose–Einstein statistics In quantum statistics, Bose–Einstein statistics (B–E statistics) describe ...

and

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and ...

. At MIT, he had many PhD students in theoretical physics including Raymond G. Vickson who became a professor in Operations Research at the University of Waterloo. After retiring in 1999, he wrote on

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

and was also a visiting professor at

Nanyang Technological University The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a national research university in Singapore. It is the second oldest autonomous university in the country and is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the world by various inte ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

. Huang was best known to

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

readers as the translator of the ''

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ''Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám'' is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (') attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia". Altho ...

''; while a graduate student in physics, he adapted Edward FitzGerald's famous adaptation into

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

verse. The book () had been out of print for years, but was reprinted in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

in 1989. With his wife Rosemary, Huang also translated the ancient

divination Divination (from Latin ''divinare'', 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout histor ...

text ''

I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zho ...

'' into English. Huang died on 1 September 2016 at the age of 88.

Books

* 2016
Superfluid Universe''
Singapore: World Scientific Publishing. *2014. * 2007
''Fundamental Forces of Nature: The Story of Gauge Fields''
World Scientific. Aimed at educated lay readers. * 2005
''Lectures on Statistical Physics and Protein Folding''
World Scientific. * 2001

Taylor & Francis. * 1998. ''Quantum Field Theory: From Operators to Path Integrals''. John Wiley & Sons.

* 1992. ''Quarks, Leptons and Gauge Fields'', 2nd ed. World Scientific. * 1987. ''Statistical Mechanics'', 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons. * 1984. ''I Ching, the Oracle''. World Scientific.

References

External links

1928 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Chinese translators 21st-century Chinese translators English–Chinese translators Chinese emigrants to the United States Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Tsinghua University faculty People from Nanning Educators from Guangxi Writers from Guangxi Physicists from Guangxi MIT Center for Theoretical Physics faculty MIT Department of Physics alumni {{China-translator-stub