Carving out a niche for Chinese fungi: Specimens and war in Sino-US scientific interaction, 1920s-1940s
Lu D.
1 July 2025Oxford University Press
Journal of the History of Collections
2025#37Issue 2311 - 328 pp.
The history of a large collection of Chinese fungi at Cornell University, repatriated to Beijing in 2009, can be traced back to 1928. From this year the Cornell-trained mycologist Deng Shuqun began to send specimens of Chinese fungi and his publications to Cornell, while benefiting from Cornell’s support for his research on fungi and for the acquisition of scientific literature. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 he contributed to the shipment of fungal specimens to both the United States Department of Agriculture and Cornell University. The relocation of the specimens from China to the USA, arising from scientific purposes, facilitated the integration of the local natural world into the international scientific landscape. It was the fruit of trans-Pacific scientific interaction based on goodwill and reciprocity, especially in wartime. Behind it lay the interplay of patriotism and scientific internationalism, which sustained the agency of China’s first-generation biologists, as well as the intersection between science and politics.
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
School of Sciences and Humanities, Nazarbayev University, Astana, 010000, Kazakhstan
School of Sciences and Humanities
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026