Prof. Dr. H. Robert Horvitz

Discovery Sheds Light on AIDS, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Stroke, and Cancer

H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D., a long-time grantee of the National Institutes of Health, is a winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He is cited for characterizing key genes controlling cell death, which is essential for embryonic development and, when improperly controlled, is a hallmark of numerous diseases.

NIH has provided more than $7 million to support Dr. Horvitz's research over the past 25 years.

"I am delighted that the Nobel Assembly chose to recognize this groundbreaking work," said Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., NIH Director. "It is a clear example of how basic research lays the foundation for improved understanding of human health. One of the key roles of the NIH is to support such promising areas of basic biomedical research."

The Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, announced the award winners this morning. Dr. Horvitz, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shares the prize with Sydney Brenner, D. Phil., of The Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, CA, and John E. Sulston, Ph.D., of The Sanger Centre in Cambridge, UK. The three, who worked independently, are recognized "for their discoveries concerning genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death."

"Dr. Horvitz's work helps answer one of the most significant questions in all of biology--how a fertilized egg develops into an adult. His research opened up a new field of inquiry into cell death that has shed light on how organs form and how a number of diseases develop," said Judith H. Greenberg, Ph.D., acting director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which has funded Dr. Horvitz's research since 1978. In 1991, NIGMS gave Dr. Horvitz a MERIT award, which provides investigators who have demonstrated superior competence and outstanding productivity with long-term, stable support to foster their continued research contributions.

Like a sculptor shaving off bits of marble to shape a statue, organisms use cell death to shape developing organs, including the brain. Dr. Horvitz identified the first two "cell death" genes by studying a simple model system--the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. He also proved that humans have cell death genes similar to those he identified in the worm.

Cell death is precisely choreographed during development. But when this tight control is lost, the road is paved for disease. Excessive cell death is associated with diseases like AIDS, stroke, and Parkinson's. On the other hand, insufficient cell death--the survival of crippled cells that should die--can lead to cancer and autoimmune diseases.

NIGMS funds research and research training in the basic biomedical sciences, including genetics and cell and molecular biology. This support enables scientists at universities, medical schools, and research institutions throughout the country to expand knowledge about the fundamental life processes that underlie human health and disease.

Dr. Horvitz, a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, has also been awarded the Genetics Society of America Medal, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience, and the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation's, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize. Dr. Horvitz received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University in 1974.

Of the 80 American Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine since 1945, 61 either worked at or were funded by NIH before winning the prize. Of these, 30 received support from NIGMS. Although the bulk of Dr. Horvitz's NIH funding comes from NIGMS, he also received support from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

# # #

For comments on Dr. Horvitz's NIGMS-supported research, call Alisa Machalek in the NIGMS Office of Communications and Public Liaison at (301) 496-7301 to arrange an interview with an NIGMS geneticist.

http://www.nigms.nih.gov/News/Results/NIHGranteeHRobertHorvitzWins.htm

Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi (1901–1954)

Enrico Fermi (29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an American-Italian physicist particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity.

Fermi is widely regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 20th century, highly accomplished in both theory and experiment. Along with J. Robert Oppenheimer, he is frequently referred to as "the father of the atomic bomb". He also held several patents related to the use of nuclear power.

Several awards, concepts, and institutions are named after Fermi, such as the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Fermi National Accelerator Lab, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, a type of particles called fermions, the synthetic element Fermium, and many more.

Biography

Early years

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, to Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Communications, and Ida de Gattis, an elementary school teacher who built her own pressure cooker. As a young boy, he learned physics and mathematics to help him not think about his deceased brother and shared his interests with his older brother, Giulio. They dismantled small engines and other parts. When Giulio died unexpectedly of a throat abscess in 1915, Enrico was distraught, and immersed himself in scientific study to distract himself. According to his own account, each day he would walk in front of the hospital where Giulio died until he became inured to the pain. One of the first sources for the study of physics was a book found at the local market of Campo de' Fiori in Roma. The 900 page book, entitled Elementorum physicae mathematicae, was written in Latin by Jesuit Father Andrea Caraffa, a professor at the Collegio Romano, covered subjects like mathematics, classical mechanics, astronomy, optics, and acoustics. Notes found in the book indicate that Fermi studied it intensely. Later, Enrico befriended another scientifically inclined student named Enrico Persico, and the two worked together on scientific projects such as building gyroscopes, and measuring the Earth's magnetic field. Fermi's interest in physics was further encouraged by a friend of his father, Adolfo Amidei, who gave him several books on physics and mathematics, which he read and assimilated quickly.

Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa

In 1918 Fermi enrolled at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he was later to receive his undergraduate and doctoral degree. In order to enter the Institute, candidates had to take an entrance exam which included an essay. For his essay on the given theme Characteristics of Sound, 17-year-old Fermi chose to derive and solve the Fourier analysis based partial differential equation for waves on a string. The examiner, Prof. Giulio Pittato, interviewed Fermi and concluded that his essay would have been commendable even for a doctoral degree. Enrico Fermi ended up at the first place in the classification of the entrance exam. During his years at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Fermi teamed up with a fellow student named Franco Rasetti with whom he used to indulge in light-hearted pranks. Later, Rasetti became Fermi's close friend and collaborator. Besides attending the classes, Enrico Fermi found the time to work on his extracurricular activities, particularly with the help of his friend Enrico Persico, who remained in Rome to attend the university. Between 1919 and 1923 Fermi studied general relativity, quantum mechanics and atomic physics.

His knowledge of quantum physics reached such a high level that the head of the Physics Institute, Prof. Luigi Puccianti, asked him to organize seminars about that topic. During this time he learned tensor calculus, a mathematical instrument invented by Gregorio Ricci and Tullio Levi-Civita, and needed to demonstrate the principles of general relativity. In 1921, his third year at the university, he published his first scientific works in the Italian journal Nuovo Cimento: the first was entitled: "On the dynamics of a solid system of electrical charges in transient conditions"; the second: "On the electrostatics of a uniform gravitational field of electromagnetic charges and on the weight of electromagnetic charges". At first glance, the first paper seemed to point out a contradiction between the electrodynamic theory and the relativistic one concerning the calculation of the electromagnetic masses. After one year with a work entitled "Correction of severe discrepancy between electrodynamic theory and the relativistic one of electromagnetic charges. Inertia and weight of electricity", Enrico Fermi showed the correctness of his paper. This last publication was so successful that it was translated into German and published in the famous German scientific journal Physikalische Zeitschrift.

In 1922 he published his first important scientific work in the Italian journal I Rendiconti dell'Accademia dei Lincei entitled "On the phenomena that happen close to the line of time", where he introduces for the first time the so-called "Fermi coordinates", and proves that when close to the time line, space behaves as a euclidean one. In 1922 Fermi graduated from Scuola Normale Superiore.

In 1923, while writing the appendix for the Italian edition of the book The Mathematical Theory of Relativity by A. Kopff, Enrico Fermi pointed out, for the first time, the fact that hidden inside the famous Einstein equation (E = mc²), there was an enormous amount of energy (nuclear energy) to be exploited.

Fermi's Ph.D advisor was Luigi Puccianti. In 1924 Fermi spent a semester at the University of Göttingen, and then stayed for a few months in Leiden with Paul Ehrenfest. From January 1925 to the autumn of 1926, he stayed at the University of Florence. In this period he wrote his work on the Fermi–Dirac statistics.

Professor in Rome

Aged 24, Fermi took a professorship at the University of Rome (first in atomic physics in Italy) which he won in a competition held by Professor Orso Mario Corbino, director of the Institute of Physics. Corbino helped Fermi in selecting his team, which soon was joined by notable minds like Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Franco Rasetti and Emilio Segrè. For the theoretical studies only, Ettore Majorana also took part in what was soon nicknamed "the Via Panisperna boys" (after the name of the road in which the Institute had its labs). The group went on with its now famous experiments, but in 1933 Rasetti left Italy for Canada and the United States, Pontecorvo went to France and Segrè left to teach in Palermo.

During their time in Rome, Fermi and his group made important contributions to many practical and theoretical aspects of physics. These include the theory of beta decay, with the inclusion of the neutrino postulated in 1930 by Pauli, and the discovery of slow neutrons, which was to prove pivotal for the working of nuclear reactors. His group systematically bombarded elements with slow neutrons, and during their experiments with uranium, narrowly missed observing nuclear fission. At that time, fission was thought to be improbable if not impossible, mostly on theoretical grounds. While people expected elements with higher atomic number to form from neutron bombardment of lighter elements, nobody expected neutrons to have enough energy to actually split a heavier atom into two light element fragments. However, the chemist Ida Noddack had criticised Fermi's work and had suggested that some of his experiments could have produced lighter elements. At the time, Fermi dismissed this possibility on the basis of calculations.

Fermi was well-known for his simplicity in solving problems. He began his inquiries with the simplest lines of mathematical reasoning, then later produced complete solutions to the problems he deemed worth pursuing. His abilities as a great scientist, combining theoretical and applied nuclear physics, were acknowledged by all. He influenced many physicists who worked with him, such as Hans Bethe, who spent two semesters working with Fermi in the early 1930s. From the time he was a boy, Fermi meticulously recorded his calculations in notebooks, and later used to solve many new problems that he encountered based on these earlier known problems.

When Fermi submitted his famous paper on beta decay to the prestigious journal Nature, the journal's editor turned it down because "it contained speculations which were too remote from reality". Thus Fermi saw the theory published in Italian and in German before it was published in English. Nature eventually did publish Fermi's report on beta decay on January 16, 1939.

Fermi remained in Rome until 1938.

The Manhattan Project

Fermi (bottom left), Leo Szilárd (second from right on bottom), and the rest of the pile team.

In 1938, Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37 for his "demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons". After Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, he, his wife Laura, and their children emigrated to New York. This was mainly because of the anti-Semitic laws promulgated by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini which threatened Laura, who was Jewish. Also, the new laws put most of Fermi's research assistants out of work. Soon after his arrival in New York, Fermi began working at Columbia University.

In December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann sent a manuscript to Naturwissenschaften reporting they had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons; simultaneously, they communicated these results to Lise Meitner. Meitner, and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, correctly interpreted these results as being nuclear fission. Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939.

Fermi's ID badge photo from Los Alamos.

Meitner's and Frisch's interpretation of the work of Hahn and Strassmann crossed the Atlantic Ocean with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University. Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University physicists working at Princeton, heard the news and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Enrico Fermi; Fermi gave credit to Lamb. Bohr soon thereafter went from Princeton to Columbia to see Fermi. Not finding Fermi in his office, Bohr went down to the cyclotron area and found Herbert L. Anderson. Bohr grabbed him by the shoulder and said: “Young man, let me explain to you about something new and exciting in physics.” It was clear to a number of scientists at Columbia that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium from neutron bombardment. On 25 January 1939, a Columbia University team conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States, which was done in the basement of Pupin Hall; the members of the team were Herbert L. Anderson, Eugene T. Booth, John R. Dunning, Enrico Fermi, G. Norris Glasoe, and Francis G. Slack. The next day, the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics began in Washington, D.C. under the joint auspices of The George Washington University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. There, the news on nuclear fission was spread even further, which fostered many more experimental demonstrations.

Fermi then went to the University of Chicago and began studies that led to the construction of the first nuclear pile Chicago Pile-1.

Fermi recalled the beginning of the project in a speech given in 1954 when he retired as President of the American Physical Society:

"I remember very vividly the first month, January, 1939, that I started working at the Pupin Laboratories because things began happening very fast. In that period, Niels Bohr was on a lecture engagement at the Princeton University and I remember one afternoon Willis Lamb came back very excited and said that Bohr had leaked out great news. The great news that had leaked out was the discovery of fission and at least the outline of its interpretation. Then, somewhat later that same month, there was a meeting in Washington where the possible importance of the newly discovered phenomenon of fission was first discussed in semi-jocular earnest as a possible source of nuclear power."

An image from the Fermi–Szilárd "neutronic reactor" patent.

In August 1939 Leó Szilárd prepared and Albert Einstein signed the famous letter warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the probability that the Nazis were planning to build an atomic bomb. Because of Hitler's September 1 invasion of Poland, it was October before they could arrange for the letter to be personally delivered. Roosevelt was concerned enough that the Uranium Committee was assembled, and awarded Columbia University the first nuclear power funding of US$6,000. However, due to bureaucratic fears of foreigners doing secret research, the money was not actually issued until Szilárd implored Einstein to send a second letter to the president in the spring of 1940. The money was used in studies which led to the first nuclear reactor — Chicago Pile-1, a massive "atomic pile" of graphite bricks and uranium fuel which went critical on December 2, 1942, built in a hard racquets court under Stagg Field, the football stadium at the University of Chicago. Due to a mistranslation, Soviet reports on Enrico Fermi claimed that his work was performed in a converted "pumpkin field" instead of a "squash court", squash being an offshoot of hard racquets. This experiment was a landmark in the quest for energy, and it was typical of Fermi's brilliance. Every step had been carefully planned, every calculation meticulously done by him. When the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved, a coded phone call was made by one of the physicists, Arthur Compton, to James Conant, chairman of the National Defense Research Committee. The conversation was in impromptu code:

“

Compton: The Italian navigator has landed in the New World. Conant: How were the natives? Compton: Very friendly.

”

This successful initiation of a chain-reacting pile was important not only for its help in assessing the properties of fission — needed for understanding the internal workings of an atomic bomb — but also because it would serve as a pilot plant for the massive reactors which would be created in Hanford, Washington, which would then be used to produce the plutonium needed for the bombs used at the Trinity site and Nagasaki. Eventually Fermi and Szilárd's reactor work was folded into the Manhattan Project.

Fermi moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory in the later stages of the Manhattan Project to serve as a general consultant. He was sitting in the control room of the Hanford B Reactor when it first went critical in 1944. His broad knowledge of many fields of physics was useful in solving problems that were of an interdisciplinary nature. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America in 1944.

Fermi was present as an observer of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945. Engineer Jack Aeby saw Fermi at work:

“

As the shock wave hit Base Camp, Aeby saw Enrico Fermi with a handful of torn paper. "He was dribbling it in the air. When the shock wave came it moved the confetti. He thought for a moment." Fermi had just estimated the yield of the first nuclear explosion. It was in the ball park.

”

Fermi's strips-of-paper estimate was ten kilotons of TNT; the actual yield was about 19 kilotons

In 1947, Fermi invented the FERMIAC, an analog computer that used the Monte Carlo Method to study neutron transport through fissionable materials.

Post-war work

The sign at Enrico Fermi street in Rome

In Fermi's 1954 address to the APS he also said, "Well, this brings us to Pearl Harbor. That is the time when I left Columbia University, and after a few months of commuting between Chicago and New York, eventually moved to Chicago to keep up the work there, and from then on, with a few notable exceptions, the work at Columbia was concentrated on the isotope separation phase of the atomic energy project, initiated by Booth, Dunning and Urey about 1940".

Fermi was widely regarded as the only physicist of the twentieth century who excelled both theoretically and experimentally. The well-known historian of physics, C. P. Snow, says about him, "If Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole". Fermi's ability and success stemmed as much from his appraisal of the art of the possible, as from his innate skill and intelligence. He disliked complicated theories, and while he had great mathematical ability, he would never use it when the job could be done much more simply. He was famous for getting quick and accurate answers to problems which would stump other people. Later on, his method of getting approximate and quick answers through back-of-the-envelope calculations became informally known as the 'Fermi method'.

Fermi's most disarming trait was his great modesty, and his ability to do any kind of work, whether creative or routine. It was this quality that made him popular and liked among people of all strata, from other Nobel Laureates to technicians. Henry DeWolf Smyth, who was Chairman of the Princeton Physics department, had once invited Fermi over to do some experiments with the Princeton cyclotron. Walking into the lab one day, Smyth saw the distinguished scientist helping a graduate student move a table, under another student's directions. Another time, a Du Pont executive made a visit to see him at Columbia. Not finding him either in his lab or his office, the executive was surprised to find the Nobel Laureate in the machine shop, cutting sheets of tin with a big pair of shears.

After the war, Fermi served for a short time on the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, a scientific committee chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer which advised the commission on nuclear matters and policy. After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he, along with Isidor Rabi, wrote a strongly worded report for the committee which opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on moral and technical grounds. But Fermi also participated in preliminary work on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos as a consultant, and along with Stanislaw Ulam, calculated that the amount of tritium needed for Edward Teller's model of a thermonuclear weapon would be prohibitive, and a fusion reaction could not be assured to propagate even with this large quantity of tritium.

Fermi was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at an AEC hearing in 1954. The hearing resulted in denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance.

In his later years, Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons. He was also known to be an inspiring teacher at the University of Chicago, and was known for his attention to detail, simplicity, and careful preparation for a lecture. Later, his lecture notes, especially those for quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and thermodynamics, were transcribed into books which are still in print.

He also mused about a proposition which is now referred to as the "Fermi Paradox". This contradiction or proposition is this: that with the billions and billions of star systems in the universe, one would think that intelligent life would have contacted our civilization by now.

Toward the end of his life, Fermi questioned his faith in society at large to make wise choices about nuclear technology. He said:

"Some of you may ask, what is the good of working so hard merely to collect a few facts which will bring no pleasure except to a few long-haired professors who love to collect such things and will be of no use to anybody because only few specialists at best will be able to understand them? In answer to such question[s] I may venture a fairly safe prediction.

History of science and technology has consistently taught us that scientific advances in basic understanding have sooner or later led to technical and industrial applications that have revolutionized our way of life. It seems to me improbable that this effort to get at the structure of matter should be an exception to this rule. What is less certain, and what we all fervently hope, is that man will soon grow sufficiently adult to make good use of the powers that he acquires over nature."

Fermi died at age 53 of stomach cancer (a result of heavy exposures to radiation) in Chicago, Illinois, and was interred at Oak Woods Cemetery. Two of his graduate students who assisted him in working on or near the nuclear pile also died of cancer. Fermi and his team knew that such work carried considerable risk but they considered the outcome so vital that they forged ahead with little regard for their own personal safety.

As Eugene Wigner wrote: "Ten days before Fermi had died he told me, 'I hope it won't take long.' He had reconciled himself perfectly to his fate".

Impact and legacy

• A recent^[when?] poll by Time magazine listed Fermi among the top twenty scientists and thinkers of the century.^{[citation needed]}
• The Fermilab particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, is named after him.
• Three nuclear reactor installations have been named after Fermi:
  • Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 nuclear power plants in Newport, Michigan
  • Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, in Italy.
  • RA-1 Enrico Fermi, a research reactor in Argentina.
• Many schools are also named after him, such as the Enrico Fermi High School in Enfield, Connecticut.
• Fermi Court in Deep River, Ontario is named in his honour.
• In 1952, element 100 on the periodic table of elements was isolated from the debris of a nuclear test. In honor of Fermi's contributions to the scientific community, it was named fermium after him.
• Since the 1950s, the United States Atomic Energy Commission has named its highest honour, the Fermi Award, after him. Recipients of the award include well-known scientists like Otto Hahn, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson, John Wheeler and Hans Bethe.
• The last generation of Nvidia graphics cards, codenamed Fermi, is named after him
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi

Patents

• 2206634, Process for the Production of Radioactive Substances, filed October, 1935, issued July, 1940
• 2524379, Neutron Velocity Selector, filed September, 1945, issued October, 1950
• 2708656, Neutronic reactor, with Leó Szilárd, filed December, 1944, issued May, 1955
• 2768134, Testing Material in a Neutronic Reactor, filed August, 1945, issued October, 1956
• 2780595, Test Exponential Pile, filed May, 1944, issued February 1957
• 2798847, Method of Operating a Neutronic Reactor, filed December 1944, issued July, 1957
• 2807581, Neutronic Reactor, filed October 1945, issued September, 1957
• 2807727, Neutronic Reactor Shield, filed January 1946, issued September, 1957
• 2813070, Method of Sustaining a Neutronic Chain Reacting System, filed November, 1945, issued November, 1957
• 2836554, Air Cooled Neutronic Reactor
• 2837477, Chain Reacting System
• 2852461, Neutronic Reactor
• 2931762, Neutronic Reactor
• 2969307, Method of Testing Thermal Neutron Fissionable Material for Purity, filed November 1945, issued January 1961

Cheng Ho

Statue from a modern monument to Zheng He at the Stadthuys Museum in Malacca, Malaysia.

Zheng He (simplified Chinese: 郑和; traditional Chinese: 鄭和; pinyin: Zhèng Hé; Wade-Giles: Cheng Ho; Birth name: 馬和 Ma He. Also known as: 馬三寶 / 马三宝; pinyin: Mǎ Sānbǎo, Arabic/Persian name: حاجی محمود شمس Hajji Mahmud Shams) (1371–1435), was a Hui Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa, collectively referred to as the travels of "Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean" (Chinese: 三保太監下西洋) or "Zheng He to the Western Ocean", from 1405 to 1433.

Life

The root of the 7th voyage of Zheng He's fleet. Solid line: main fleet; dashed line: a possible route of Hong Bao's squadron; dotted line: a trip of seven Chinese sailors, including Ma Huan, from Calicut to Mecca on a native ship. Cities visited by Zheng He's fleet or its squadron on the 7th or any of the previous voyages are shown in red.

Zheng He was originally named 'Ma He' and was born in 1371. He was the second son of a Muslim family which also had four daughters, from Kunyang, present day Jinning, just south of Kunming near the southwest corner of Lake Dian in Yunnan.

He was the great great great grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongolian Empire and was appointed governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather carried the title of Hajji, which indicates they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been a member of a Mongol garrison in Yunnan.

In 1381, the year his father was killed, following the defeat of the Northern Yuan, a Ming army was dispatched to Yunnan to put down the Mongol rebel Basalawarmi. Ma He, then only eleven years old, was captured and made a eunuch. He was sent to the Imperial court, where he was called 'San Bao' meaning 'Three Jewels.' He eventually became a trusted adviser of the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424), assisting him in deposing his predecessor, the Jianwen Emperor. In return for meritorious service, the eunuch received the name Zheng He from the Yongle Emperor.

In 1425 the Hongxi Emperor appointed him to be Defender of Nanjing. In 1428 the Xuande Emperor ordered him to complete the construction of the magnificent Buddhist nine-storied Da Baoen Temple in Nanjing, and in 1430 appointed him to lead the seventh and final expedition to the "Western Ocean". Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage, on the returning trip after the fleet reached Hormuz in 1433.

Expeditions

Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored a series of seven naval expeditions. The Yongle emperor designed them to establish a Chinese presence, impose imperial control over trade, and impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin. He also might have wanted to extend the tributary system.

Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions. Wang Jinghong was appointed his second in command. Zheng He's first voyage consisted of a fleet of 317 treasure ships (other sources say 200 ships) holding almost 28,000 crewmen (each ship housing up to 500 men).

One of a set of maps of Zheng He's missions (郑和航海图), also known as the Mao Kun maps, 1628.

Zheng He's fleets visited Arabia, Brunei, East Africa, India, Malay Archipelago and Thailand (at the time called Siam), dispensing and receiving goods along the way. Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and giraffes.

Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission.^{[citation needed]} But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might.^{[citation needed]} He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte in Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.

In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (reigned 1424–1425), decided to stop the voyages during his short reign. Zheng He made one more voyage under the Xuande Emperor (reigned 1426–1435), but after that the voyages of the Chinese treasure ship fleets were ended. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea.

Voyages

The Kangnido map (1402) predates Zheng's voyages and suggests that he had quite detailed geographical information on much of the Old World.

Order	Time	Regions along the way
1st Voyage	1405–1407	Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Aru, Sumatra, Lambri, Ceylon, Kollam, Cochin, Calicut
2nd Voyage	1407–1409	Champa, Java, Siam, Cochin, Ceylon
3rd Voyage	1409–1411	Champa, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Quilon, Cochin, Calicut, Siam, Lambri, Kaya, Coimbatore, Puttanpur
4th Voyage	1413–1415	Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, Kayal, Pahang, Kelantan, Aru, Lambri, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden, Muscat, Dhufar
5th Voyage	1416–1419	Champa, Pahang, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Lambri, Ceylon, Sharwayn, Cochin, Calicut, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden
6th Voyage	1421–1422	Hormuz, East Africa, countries of the Arabian Peninsula
7th Voyage	1430–1433	Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Hormuz... (17 states in total)

Zheng He led seven expeditions to what the Chinese called "the Western Ocean" (Indian Ocean). He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms — including King Alagakkonara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor.

The records of Zheng's last two voyages, which are believed to be his farthest, were unfortunately destroyed by the Ming emperor. Therefore it is never certain where Zheng has sailed in these two expeditions. The traditional view is that he went as far as Iran.

Detail of the Fra Mauro mapjunk relating the travels of a into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.

There are speculations that some of Zheng's ships may have traveled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro describes in his 1459 Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. What Fra Mauro meant by 'India' is not known and some scholars believe he meant an Arab ship. However, Professor Su Ming-Yang thinks "the ship is European, as it is fitted with a crow’s nest, or lookout post, at the masthead, and has sails fitted to the yards, unlike the batten sails of Chinese ships."

Zheng himself wrote of his travels:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers or 30,000 miles) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare… — Tablet erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes

Sailing charts

Part of the chart showing India at top, Ceylon upper right and Africa along the bottom

Ming dynasty 24 point compass

Zheng He's sailing charts were published in a book entitled Wubei Zhi (Treatise on Armament Technology) written in 1621 and published in 1628 but traced back to Zheng He's and earlier voyages. It was originally a strip map 20.5 cm by 560 cm that could be rolled up, but was divided into 40 pages which vary in scale from 7 miles/inch in the Nanjing area to 215 miles/inch in parts of the African coast.

There is little attempt to provide an accurate 2-D representation; instead the sailing instructions are given using a 24 point compass system with a Chinese symbol for each point, together with a sailing time/distance, which takes account of the local currents and winds. Sometimes depth soundings are also provided. It also shows bays, estuaries, capes and islands, ports and mountains along the coast, important landmarks (pagodas, temples) and shoal rocks. Of 300 named places outside China, more than 80% can be confidently located. There are also fifty observations of stellar altitude.

Size of the ships

Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships, far larger than any other wooden ships in history. Most modern scholars consider these descriptions to be exaggerated.^{[citation needed]}

Chinese records^{[citation needed]} assert that Zheng He's fleet sailed as far as East Africa. According to medieval Chinese sources^{[citation needed]}, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions. The 1405 expedition consisted of 27,800 men and a fleet of 62 treasure ships supported by approximately 190 smaller ships. The fleet included:

• Treasure ships (Chinese:宝船), used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 126.73 metres (416 ft) long and 51.84 metres (170 ft) wide), according to later writers^{[citation needed]}. This is more or less the size and shape of a football field. The treasure ships purportedly could carry as much as 1,500 tons. 1 By way of comparison, a modern ship of about 1,200 tons is 60 meters (200 ft) long, and the ships Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492 were about 70-100 tons and 17 meters (55 ft) long.

• Equine ships (Chinese:馬船), carrying horses and tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long and 42 m (138 ft) wide).
• Supply ships (Chinese:粮船), containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).
• Troop transports (Chinese:兵船), six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide.
• Fuchuan warships (Chinese:福船), five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long.
• Patrol boats (Chinese:坐船), eight-oared, about 37 m (120 ft) long.
• Water tankers (Chinese:水船), with 1 month's supply of fresh water.

Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433, with fleets of comparable size.

If the accounts can be taken as factual, Zheng He's treasure ships were mammoth ships with nine masts, four decks, and were capable of accommodating more than 500 passengers, as well as a massive amount of cargo. Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described multi-masted ships carrying 500 to 1000 passengers in their translated accounts. Niccolò Da Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen 5 masted junks weighing about 2000 tons There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as 600 feet. On the ships were navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers along with the translator and diarist Gong Zhen (simplified Chinese: 巩珍; traditional Chinese: 鞏珍; pinyin: gŏng zhēn).

Modern study of ship dimensions

A display at the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai purports to compare the size of ships used by Zheng He and by Christopher Columbus.

According to recent research by professor of marine engineering Xin Yuanou, the length of many of the ships has been estimated at 59 m (193.6 ft), but is under heavy dispute by other scholars.

The largest ships in the fleet, the treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been several times larger than any wooden ship ever recorded in history, surpassing l'Orient (65 m/213.3 ft long) which was built in the late 18th century. The first ships to attain 126 m (413.4 ft) long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls. Some scholars argue that it is highly unlikely that Zheng He's ship was 450 feet (137.2 m) in length, some estimating that they were 390–408 feet (118.9–124.4 m) long and 160–166 feet (48.8–50.6 m) wide instead while others put them as 200–250 feet (61.0–76.2 m) in length.

One explanation for the seemingly inefficient size of these colossal ships was that the largest 44 Zhang treasure ships were merely used by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet. The Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the privilege in rank to command the largest of these ships, seaworthy or not. The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead 6 masted 2000-liao ships.

“

A replica (4 feet / 1.22 meters long, 1 foot 8 inches/0.51 meters wide, and 3 feet / 0.91 meters tall) of Zheng He’s largest treasure boat will be on display at the lecture session. According to the maker of the replica, Quanzhou Maritime Museum and China Ancient Ship Modeling Center, the original treasure boat was 125 meters (410.1 ft) long and 51 meters (167.3 ft) wide, with a maximum loading capacity of 7,000 tons and total water displacement of 14,800 tons.

”

Early 17th century Chinese woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.^{[citation needed]}

Accounts of medieval travellers

The characteristics of the Chinese ships of the period are described by Western travelers to the East, such as Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo. According to Ibn Battuta, who visited China in 1347:

…We stopped in the port of Calicut, in which there were at the time thirteen Chinese vessels, and disembarked. China Sea traveling is done in Chinese ships only, so we shall describe their arrangements. The Chinese vessels are of three kinds; large ships called chunks (junks), middle sized ones called zaws (dhows) and the small ones kakams. The large ships have anything from twelve down to three sails, which are made of bamboo rods plaited into mats. They are never lowered, but turned according to the direction of the wind; at anchor they are left floating in the wind. Three smaller ones, the "half", the "third" and the "quarter", accompany each large vessel. These vessels are built in the towns of Zaytun and Sin-Kalan. The vessel has four decks and contains rooms, cabins, and saloons for merchants; a cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupants. This is the manner after which they are made; two (parallel) walls of very thick wooden (planking) are raised and across the space between them are placed very thick planks (the bulkheads) secured longitudinally and transversely by means of large nails, each three ells in length. When these walls have thus been built the lower deck is fitted in and the ship is launched before the upper works are finished." (Ibn Battuta).^{[citation needed]}

Zheng He and Islam in Southeast Asia

Islam in China

History of Islam in China

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Accounts contemporary to Zheng He's era suggest he was a Muslim; these include the writings of Ma Huan, Zheng He's chronicler, interpreter, and fellow Muslim, who travelled with him on many of his voyages. As evidence of Zheng He's high regard for temples and places of worship of other religions, the Galle Trilingual Inscription stone tablet, erected by Zheng He around 1410 in Sri Lanka records details about contributions of gold, silver, and silk that he made at a Buddhist mountain temple. Also, a commemorative pillar at the temple of the Taoist goddess Tian Fei, the Celestial Spouse, in Fujian province records details about his voyages, as well as his veneration and respect for the Goddess. It has the inscription:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

—Erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes

Indonesian religious leader and Islamic scholar Hamka (1908–1981) wrote in 1961: "The development of Islam in Indonesia and Malaya is intimately related to a Chinese Muslim, Admiral Zheng He." In Malacca he built granaries, warehouses and a stockade, and most probably he left behind many of his Muslim crews. Much of the information on Zheng He's voyages was compiled by Ma Huan, also Muslim, who accompanied Zheng He on several of his inspection tours and served as his chronicler / interpreter. In his book 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores' (Chinese: 瀛涯勝覽) written in 1416, Ma Huan gave very detailed accounts of his observations of the peoples' customs and lives in ports they visited. Zheng He had many Muslim Eunuchs as his companions. At the time when his fleet first arrived in Malacca, there were already Chinese 'Muslims' living there. Ma Huan talks about them as tángrén (Chinese: 唐人) who were Muslim. At their ports of call, they actively preached Islam, established Chinese Muslim communities, and built mosques.

Indonesian scholar Slamet Muljana writes: "Zheng He built Chinese Muslim communities first in Palembang, then in San Fa (West Kalimantan), subsequently he founded similar communities along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines. They preached Islam according to the Hanafi school of thought and in Chinese language."

Li Tong Cai, in his book 'Indonesia – Legends and Facts', writes: "in 1430, Zheng He had already successfully established the foundations of the Hui religion Islam. After his death in 1434, Hajji Yan Ying Yu became the force behind the Chinese Muslim community, and he delegated a few local Chinese as leaders, such as trader Sun Long from Semarang, Peng Rui He and Hajji Peng De Qin. Sun Long and Peng Rui He actively urged the Chinese community to 'Javanise'. They encouraged the younger Chinese generation to assimilate with the Javanese society, to take on Javanese names and their way of life. Sun Long's adopted son Chen Wen, also named Radin Pada is the son of King Majapahit and his Chinese wife." It seems likely that Chen Wen is the same Raden Patah, the founder of Demak Sultanate who had a Chinese mother and was a student and/or cousin of Sunan Ampel.

After Zheng He's death, Chinese naval expeditions were suspended. The Hanafi Islam that Zheng He and his people propagated lost almost all contact with Islam in China, and gradually was totally absorbed by the local Shafi’i school of thought. When Melaka was successively colonised by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and later the British, Chinese were discouraged from converting to Islam. Many of the Chinese Muslim mosques became San Bao Chinese temples commemorating Zheng He. After a lapse of 600 years, the influence of Chinese Muslims in Malacca declined to almost nil. In many ways, Zheng He can be considered a major founder of the present community of Chinese Indonesians.

In Malacca

San Bao Temple in Malacaa

According to the Malaysian history, Sultan Mansur Shah (ruled 1459–1477) dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China and carried a letter from the Sultan to the Ming Emperor. Tun Perpatih succeeded in impressing the Emperor of Ming with the fame and grandeur of Sultan Mansur Shah. In the year 1459, a princess Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu), was sent by the emperor of Ming to marry Malacca Sultan Mansur Shah (ruled 1459–1477). The princess came with her entourage 500 sons of ministers and a few hundred handmaidens.^{[citation needed]} They eventually settled in Bukit Cina, Malacca. Considering the population of Malacca at that time, it is likely that a significant fraction of the bumiputra intermarried with them. The descendants of these mixed marriages are locally known today as peranakan and still use the honorifics Baba (male title) and Nyonya (female title).

In Malaysia today, many people believe it was Admiral Zheng He (died 1433) who sent princess Hang Li Po to Malacca in year 1459. However there is no record of Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu) in Ming documents, she is known only from Malacca folklore.

Connection to the history of Late Imperial China

A giraffe brought from Somalia^[45] in the twelfth year of Yongle (AD 1415).

Zheng He's initial objective was^{[citation needed]}to enroll far flung states into the Ming tributary system, but it was later decided that the voyages were not cost efficient.^{[citation needed]} After Zheng's voyages, China turned away from the seas due to the Hai jin order, and was isolated from European technological advancements. Although historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized this view in the 1950s, Han Chinese historians in modern times point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not totally stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to dominate Southeast Asian commerce until the 19th century and that active Chinese trading with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. The travels of the Chinese Junk Keying to the United States and England between 1846 and 1848 testify to the power of Chinese shipping until the 19th century. Moreover revisionist historians such as Jack Goldstone argue that the Zheng He voyages ended for practical reasons that did not reflect the technological level of China

Although the Ming Dynasty did ban shipping with the Hai jin edict, they eventually lifted this ban. The alternative view cites the fact that by banning oceangoing shipping, the Ming (and later Qing) dynasties forced countless numbers of people into black market smuggling. This reduced government tax revenue and increased piracy. The lack of an oceangoing navy then left China highly vulnerable to the Wokou pirates that ravaged China in the 16th century.

Richard von Glahn (University of California, Los Angeles Professor of History and a specialist in Chinese history) commented that a majority of school history texts present Zheng He wrongly; they "offer counterfactual arguments", and "emphasize China's missed opportunity." The "narrative emphasizes the failure" instead of Zheng He's accomplishments. He goes on to claim that "Zheng He reshaped Asia." According to him, maritime history in the fifteenth century is essentially the Zheng He story and the effects of Zheng He's voyages.

Von Glahn claims that Zheng He's influence lasted beyond his age, may be seen as the tip of an iceberg, and there is much more to the story of maritime trade and other relationships in Asia in the fifteenth century and beyond.

State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from resurgent Mongolian tribes from the north. In recognition of this threat and possibly to move closer to his family's historical geographic power base, in 1421 the emperor Yongle moved the capital north from Nanjing to present-day Beijing. From the new capital he could apply greater imperial supervision to the effort to defend the northern borders. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for these land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions.

In 1449 Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the emperor Zhengtong less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. In the Battle of Tumu Fortress the Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. This battle had two salient effects. First, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Second, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released Zhengtong after his half-brother had proclaimed himself the new Jingtai emperor. Not until 1457 did political stability return when Zhengtong recovered the throne. Upon his return to power China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In this environment, funding for naval expeditions simply did not happen.

Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing.

Relics

Nanjing Tianfeigong (南京天妃宫)

Zheng He built Tianfeigong (天妃宫, Tianfei palace) in Nanjing after the return of their first western voyage in 1407.

Stele of Tongfan Deed (通番事跡碑)

The stele of Tongfan Deed (通番事跡, deed of foreign connection and exchange) is located in the Tianfeigong in Taicang where they start their journey. It was submerged and disappeared and has been rebuilt.

Stele of Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power (天妃靈應之記碑)

In order to impetrate and thank the bless of Tianfei, Zheng He and his colleagues rebuilt Tianfeigong at Nanshan, Changle County, Fujian province before their 7th western voyage. They founded a stele with the inscription title Tian Fei Ling Ying Zhi Ji (天妃靈應之記, Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power) there, which tells about their voyages.

Zheng He Stele in Sri Lanka

Galle Trilingual Inscription in Sri Lanka was discovered in the city of Galle in 1911 and is preserved in the Sri Lanka National Museum. Three languages were used for inscription: Chinese, Tamil and Persian.

Commemoration

Museum in honour of Zheng He, Nanjing

Zheng He Museum in Malacca

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Tomb and museum

Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing has been repaired and a small museum has been built next to it, although his body is missing as he was buried at sea off the Malabar coast near Calicut in Western India.^{[citation needed]} However, his sword and other personal possessions were interred in the typical Muslim tomb inscribed with Arabic characters.

Zheng He's assistant Hong Bao's tomb was unearthed recently in Nanjing.

Maritime Day

In the People's Republic of China, 11 July is Maritime Day (中国航海日) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.

Cultrual Influence

In Vernor Vinge's science fiction A Deepness in the Sky,Qeng Ho,named after Zheng He,is the commercial traders in the human galactical system.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He