WU, HSIEN

(b. Foochow, Fukien. China, 24 NOvember 1893; d. Boston, Massachusetts, 1 August 1959)

biochemistry, nutrition.

Wu, the son of Hsiao–chien Wu and Liang Shih Wu, achieved worldwide recognition for his early studies in the United States and became China’s foremost biochemist and nutrition scientist. His name is particularly associated with analytical procedures known as the Folin and Wu methods. Born to a scholarly family, he received tutorial training in the Chinese classics, starting at age six, advaned rapidly through high school, and received and scholarship in naval architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1911.

During his first summer vacation, on a farm in New England, Wu became fascinated by the new horizons in biology opened by T. H. Huxley’s “On the Physical Basis of LIfe.” He changed his major field to chemistry and biology while at M. I. T. and then transferred to Harvard in 1917 for graduate studies (Ph. D., 1919) in biochemistry with Otto Folin. HIs interest in architecture was transformed into a lifelong hobby in the field of art, and his background in mathematics, physics, and organic analysis furnished a sound basis for his new career.

In medical laboratories it had been customary to require large samples of blood for diagnostic testing and metabolic research–a practice with disadvantages for both the physician and the patient. In his doctoral dissertation, “A System of Blood Analysis,” Wu developed techniques that permitted quantitative measurements of the major constituents of blood with only 10 ml. samples. The methods included a particularly good procedure for measuring the sugar content in blood or urine in a sample as small as one drop. Wu remained with Folin for a year of postdoctoral work subsequently accepted an appointment at the Peking Union Medical College. By 1923 Wu had organized an outstanding teaching and research program in Peking, and was promoted to associate professor and heard of the professorship from 1928 until January 1942, when the college was taken over by the Japanese. At Shanghai on 20 December 1924, Wu married Daisy Yen, a graduate student in biochemistry. They traveled to New York, where he worked with Donald van Slyke at the Rockefeller Institute and Mrs. Wu resumed her studies with Henry C. Sherman at Columbia University.

Wu’s more than 150 research papers included many contributions on the functions of electrolytes, immunochemistry, biochemical analysis, food composition, and the behavior of proteins in solution and the changes involved in protein denaturing, including the first suggestion that the change was characterized from a globular to an open structure.

After his return to Peking, Wu urged that greater attention be paid to the effects of food habits on health; and his nutritional research on experimental animals was accompanied with studied of eating habits of human beings. Wu served as a member of the National Committee on Standardization of Scientific Terminoloy of China (1921-1927). In 1926 he assisted in organizing the Chinese Physiological Society and later served as president and on the editional board (1926-1941). He was elected advister to the Institute of Physiology of the Academia Sinica in 1930, a member of the administrative committee that directed Peking Union Medical College in 1935-1937, and a fellow of the Academia Sinica.

Wu’s growing international recognition brought him membership in the American Society of Biological Chemists, honorary membership in the Deutsche Akademie Naturforschor Leopoldina, the advisory board of Biochemica et biophysica acta, and the Standing Advisory Committee on Nutrition of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the Untied Nations (1948-1950).

During the first two years of the Japanese occupation of Peking, Wu lived in retirement at his home. In March 1944 the Chinese government then at Chungking, inlived him to organize the National Nutrition Institute there; he developed plans for the Institute and was appointed director. Some three months later the government sent him to the United States as nutrition expert for a commission to study postwar problems of rehabilitation. After a year of negotiating for equipment and for dried milk in food shipments, and economic study at the Brookings Institution, Wu returned to Chungking, to report on his mission and to submit further plans for the Nutrition Institute.

In 1946 the government invited Wu to direct a branck of the National Institute of Health in Pekings as well as to continue as director of the Nutrition Institute, which had been reestablished in Nanking. But an invitation from UNESCO to be one of the six Chinese delegates to the International Physiological Congress at Oxford in July 1947 permitted Wu to revisit the United States. His discussions with his friend T.P. Hou encouraged him to plan for an Institute of Human Biology in China. He gathered eqipment for research in cluding a mass spectrometer and instruments for isotope research; and to familiarize himself with its use he served as visiting scholar for more than a year at the biochemistry department of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He also assisted in the purchase of equipment and supplies for the National Institute of Health in Peking and shipped library materials for the projected Research Institute of Human Biology.

Meanwhile, in China the Communists had surrounded Peking. With extreme difficulty Mrs. Wu escapted with their five children in January 1949 and reached San Francisco six months later. In September of that year Wu was appointed visiting professor of biochemistry, at the Medical College of the University of Alabama, where he continued his research assisted by his wife.

In 1952 Wu suffered a heart attack that led to his retirement from Alabama in August 1953. He recovered almost completely and moved to Boston, where he continued to write. A second coronary thrombosis in April 1958 was followed by his death the following year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wu’s books are Princuples of Nutition (Shanghai 1929), inchinese; and Priciplesn of physical Biochemstry (Peking,1934) in English. Of his 157 scientific memoris the most representative are “A System of Blood analysis,” in Journal of Biological Chemistry38 (1919), 81–110 written with Otto Folin; “Studies of Gas and Electrolyte Equilibria in the Water Distribution in the Blood” ibid56 (1923), 765–849, written with D.D van Slyke and F.C. McLean; “Compostion of Antigen–preciptin Precipitate,” in Proceedings ofmthe so ciety for Experimental Biology and Medicing25 (1928), 853–855, writtem with L. H. cheng and C.P.Licheg and C. P. Li; and 26 (1929), 737–738, written with P. P. T. and C. P. Li; “Studies on Denaturation,” in Proceedings of the Fourth Internatiional Congress on Tropical Medicine and Malaria,II (Washington, 1948), 1217-1223; and “Interptration of Urinary N¹⁵–Excretion Data Folowing Administrattiion o of an N¹⁵– labeled Amino Acid,” in Journal ogf Applied physioklogy14 (1959) 11–21,written with Julius Sendroy, Jr., and Charles Bishop

On huis life work See Daisy Yen Wu, Hsien Wu, 1893-1959, In Loving Memory (Boston, 1959), which includes a complete bibliograpohy ofn his writng and tributes from his colleagues.

C. G. King