Women In Stem: Wang Zhenyi
Wang Zhenyi was born in 1768, in Qing dynasty China. Due to the feudal system in place during her lifetime, it was the generally accepted idea that a woman’s place was in the home, raising and giving birth to children. Women were not meant to ‘bother themselves’ with studies and education, but luckily for Wang Zhenyi, she was born into a family that deeply valued education for all.
Her father taught her mathematics, medicine and geography, her grandfather taught her astronomy, and her grandmother even taught her poetry! She began teaching herself mathematics and astronomy more in depth by the age of sixteen, and published multiple books - up to twelve- in her lifetime, some regarding her own research, some regarding the research of others, often simplified for the general public and beginners.
In these books she wrote about her commentaries on Pythagoras’ Theorem, solar and lunar eclipses, the Chinese calendar, and simplified methods of multiplication and division.
She is possibly most well known for her experiment on eclipses. While considered mysterious and beautiful, no one really knew how they worked. Wang Zhenyi posed her own simple experiment, where she used a flat round table as the ‘earth,’ and strung up a lamp as the ‘sun,’ and mirror as the ‘moon.’
She used this experiment to prove her theories on eclipies, believing that the moon blocks our view of the sun, or the earth blocks the sun’s light from reaching the moon. She later published these theories in her books.
Unfortunately, many of her works and experiments have been lost to time, so we do not know as much about this incredible woman as we may have had her writing lasted longer. None of this is helped by the fact that she died young, aged only twenty nine.
Still, we can clearly conclude that Wang Zhenyi was a prolific scientists who introduced and studied many important theories we still use and learn of today.
She was a prolific archer + horseback rider
She wrote many poems in her life, often about the political climate in China
She travelled all over China in her lifetime
She had developed her own theories on gravity
Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed The World, by Rachel Ignotofsky.
https://massivesci.com/articles/wang-zhenyi-poetry-venus-math/
https://scientificwomen.net/women/zhenyi-wang-98
