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Astronomy Week 2025: Honouring the life and legacy of Wang Zhenyi

Eclipse illustration with 'Wang Zhenyi' text

It’s made to believe,
Women are the same as Men;
Are you not convinced,
Daughters can also be heroic?

— Wang Zhenyi

 

Wang Zhenyi (1768–1797) was born in the Qing dynasty in East China to a family of scholars. They supported her learning, despite the feudal customs of the time barring women from education.

Her grandfather introduced her to astronomy, while her grandmother taught her poetry, and her father taught her medicine, geography and mathematics. Inspired by the works of the famous scholar Mei Wending (1633-1721), she chose to focus mainly on the latter. 

She had a prolific publishing career during her short life, revising the works of mathematicians she had learnt from – simplifying many of their proofs in the process – as well as publishing original research. She became a highly-respected teacher, reportedly even teaching male students which was unheard of at the time. She published one of her most famous works, a book titled ‘The Simple Principles of Calculations’, at only 24 years old.

Using her grandfather’s extensive library, Wang studied the research of contemporary astronomers, commenting on celestial phenomena, the moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. She was especially interested in describing the relationship between lunar and solar eclipses.

One of Wang’s most famous experiments was conducted at her home, in present-day Nanjing. She used the round table in her garden pavilion to represent a globe and hung a crystal lamp on a cord from the ceiling beams to mimic the Sun. For the moon, she used a round mirror on one side of the table and was able to move the objects accurately according to astronomical principles. She recorded her findings and observations in an article, ‘The Explanation of a Solar Eclipse.’

Many of Wang’s ideas were too radical for her contemporaries, who dismissed her work. She recognised through her observations that the Earth was spherical, refuting the thousand-year-old concept of a flat Earth, and publishing ‘Theory of the Earth’s Roundness’. Wang also corrected misunderstandings about the movement of stars.

Only around ten of Wang’s papers have survived and it is believed that up to 70% of her scientific works were destroyed at her behest, following her death at the age of 29. While Wang’s cause of death is unconfirmed, it’s believed that she contracted malaria while travelling with her father and never fully recovered.

Wang is also celebrated for her significant contributions to literature, as well as her progressive views about women’s education and gender equality which she expressed throughout her poetry.

In 1994, the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature approved naming a crater on Venus in her honour.

 

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