Baichun Zhang

ZHANG Baichun is a professor at and Director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute for the History of Natural Sciences (IHNS) and Visiting Scholar in Department I. His research focuses on the history of technology, cross-cultural transmission of science and technology (S&T), as well as comparative studies of S&T development between China and other countries. He joined the IHNS in 1990 and has been in charge of such projects as Comprehensive Studies in the Development of S&T in Modern China (Book Series on the History of Science and Technology in Modern China, 2004–2009). He studied the history of astronomical instruments at the Technical University of Berlin from 1996 to 1998, and joined the research group studying the history of mechanics at the MPIWG in 1999. In 2001, he was appointed Head of the Partner Group of MPIWG at the IHNS. The Partner Group studied the development of mechanical knowledge in China and its interaction with other cultural traditions (Transformation and Transmission: Chinese Mechanical Knowledge and the Jesuit Intervention, Preprint 313 of MPIWG, 2006). Together with his colleagues, he continues to study the cross-cultural transmission and reconstruction of mechanics since the seventeenth century (Transmission and Integration: New Research on Qiqi Tushuo [Illustrations and Descriptions of Extraordinary Devices, 1628). In 2017, he and Jürgen Renn launched a new journal, the Chinese Annals of History of Science and Technology.