【Haichuan. Pioneers in the Chemical Industry】16 Zheng Zhenwen – The drafter of the \"Principles for Naming Chemical Substances\"
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Spreading modern scientific knowledge, the Commercial Press was founded in 1897 (the 23rd year of the Guangxu era) in Shanghai with funds raised by Xia Ruifang, Bao Chengsi, and others. It was the largest publishing and printing company in China at that time, renowned for publishing various textbooks, scientific series, as well as periodicals such as \"Oriental Magazine\" and \"Education Magazine.\" It made significant contributions to the development of modern science and education in China. During that time, the compilation and review of a large number of books and periodicals were carried out by the Compilation Department of The Commercial Press. During his tenure at the Translation and Compilation Department of The Commercial Press, Zheng Zhenwen worked diligently in his studies, exploring a wide range of subjects. He translated and authored numerous works on natural sciences, playing a active role in spreading modern scientific knowledge throughout the country; these works covered various disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, zoology, botany, and meteorology. These books played a significant role in the dissemination and popularization of natural science knowledge in our country during the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, Zheng Zhenwen wrote a scientific drama titled \"The Light of Love,\" which introduces Einstein’s theory of relativity in an accessible and interesting manner. There are 4 characters in the drama: one is a “Doctor of Philosophy,” another is “Tai Mo,” which is the transliteration of the word time; there’s also a female character named “Shi Peiru,” which is the transliteration of the word Space; and the last character is the God of Light. It depicts a Neo-Confucian scholar who once viewed time and space as completely unrelated; when the God of Light reveals the veils covering Thaimo and Shi Peiru, the audience comes to understand the relative relationship between time and space. This attempt to promote and popularize science through drama is truly ingenious. In its early days, the Business Translation Institute focused on editing primary school textbooks. After taking up his position, Zheng Zhenwen focused on editing middle school textbooks. To meet the teaching needs of various secondary schools at that time, in addition to organizing the selection and compilation of textbooks for physics and chemistry, he personally wrote a series of middle school chemistry textbooks. In particular, the high school textbook \"Chemistry\" published in 1929 under the New Era series was the first high school chemistry textbook written by Chinese chemists. The book is well-structured, of appropriate difficulty, and progresses step by step, making it very popular among middle school teachers and students. After its publication, the book became extremely popular across the country and was reprinted many times; it became one of the high school chemistry textbooks widely used in China during the 1930s and 1940s. Zheng Zhenwen also edited series such as \"Xueyi,\" \"Baike,\" and \"ShaoNian ZiRan Kexue.\" These series, with their rich content and varying levels of complexity suited to different readers, are very popular. Books he authored, such as \"Man,\" \"Nature and Living Things,\" \"Fire and Explosions,\" and \"Chemistry and Us,\" are written in an easy-to-understand manner and are full of interest; they combine scientific accuracy, knowledge, and entertainment, making it convenient for readers to comprehend and appreciate the content. The \"Youth Natural Science Series\" edited by Zheng Zhenwen consists of 12 volumes in total, covering almost all fields of modern natural science. Not only is the content rich and the format innovative, but the writing is also fluent and the narration vivid; it was a set of popular science books for teenagers at that time. Contributing to the standardization of chemical terms: Since modern chemistry was introduced to China in the 19th century, the Chinese translations of various chemical terms have always been an important and complex issue. China’s modern pioneers in chemistry, such as Xu Shou, along with earlier figures in the field like Yu Tongkui, Yu Heqin, and Du Yaquan, carried out some work on the transliteration of chemical terms and proposed draft names for them. However, this work was not systematic enough, and some of the translations were not yet mature, preventing their widespread adoption. During his studies in Japan, Zheng Zhenwen began to pay attention to the naming of chemical terms, and after returning to China, he conducted more systematic research on this topic. He collected many structurally defined and representative compounds, and formulated over a hundred rules, using primarily existing Chinese characters or drawing on their characteristics to create new ones. In his monograph \"Draft for the Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry,\" he built upon some of the nomenclatures established by Xu Shou, while also making further developments. Based on the physical state of the elements, he added the character \"qi\" in front of gaseous elements, the radical \"shui\" in front of liquid elements, the character \"shi\" beside non-metallic elements, and the character \"jin\" beside metallic elements to distinguish them. In his work \"Draft for the Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry,\" addressing the issues of complex terms and lengthy transliterations in organic chemistry, he abandoned the simple method of translation and adopted the principle of creating new characters. By selecting radicals from new characters, such as “艹”, “火”, “酉”, “月”, etc., it is possible to form thousands upon thousands of chemical terms used for organic compounds. This method enables the translation of complex foreign organic chemistry terminology into a unified set of Chinese terms. This is a major creation by Zheng Zhenwen. The book \"Organic Chemistry Industry\" written by Li Qiaoping in 1926 was the first work in China to adopt this new translation title. In June 1932, the National Government in Nanjing established a Translation Bureau, which set up a Committee for Reviewing Chemical Terms. The Ministry of Education appointed Zheng Zhenwen as its chairman, tasked with drafting proposals for the translation of chemical terms. Based on his years of research into chemical naming, Zheng Zhenwen wrote the draft of \"Principles of Chemical Nomenclature\". In August 1932, discussions and revisions were carried out at the founding conference of the Chinese Chemical Society in Nanjing, and it was announced and put into effect by the Ministry of Education in November of the same year. The draft was revised once in 1937. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the Chemical Terminology Review Group of the Chinese Chemical Society revised the \"Principles of Chemical Nomenclature\" and submitted them to the Culture and Education Committee for approval; they were then renamed the \"Principles of Nomenclature for Chemical Substances\" and published for implementation in 1951. Zheng Zhenwen made outstanding contributions to the improvement and systematization of chemical terminology in our country, as well as to the impact this had on teaching and research.
Established in 1932, the Chinese Chemical Society is one of the earliest and most influential specialized societies in natural sciences in China. Zheng Zhenwen was one of the founders of the society; he served as a director for its first to fifth terms (1932–1937), as the general manager at the time of the society’s journal, the Chinese Chemical Society Journal, was first published, and as a member of its terminology committee. He also established the Fuzhou Branch of the Chinese Chemical Society and served as its president for many years. Even during his time working in Shanghai, Zheng Zhenwen was one of the founders of the Shanghai Institute of Natural Sciences and a member of the committee in charge of university series publications. He played a significant role in supporting scientific research and advancing teaching in higher education institutions; for example, university series such as Ding Xuexian’s \"A Comprehensive History of Chemistry\" were published and reprinted by The Commercial Press with Zheng Zhenwen’s support and encouragement.
Oh, the name of that certain chemical we’re talking about now might well be the one he gave it
Chemical elements, as the language of the chemistry discipline, serve as an important foundation for its development and study. In 19th-century Europe, as more and more chemical elements were discovered, chemists from various countries realized the need to standardize the naming of these elements; thus, they began to use Latin names that were common throughout Europe for naming them.
How can I see “Lin Rongheng” under the book title?
This post was last edited by The wise are enlightened on 2017-9-18 21:42. Zheng Zhenwen is likely more of an educator, focusing on compilation. ”It is more appropriate to \"change\" the drafter to the compilation organizer.
Chemistry in our country was introduced from Europe at the end of the 19th century, during the Qing dynasty. The Chinese names for some chemical elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen, potassium, magnesium, sodium, etc., were created by Xu Shou, a pioneer of modern chemistry in China. The \"Principles for Naming Chemical Substances\" were revised and published in 1950, stipulating that: \"When naming elements, phonetic similarity should be the primary consideration, with semantic meaning being secondary; however, homophonic words should be avoided.\" The name of an element is represented by a single character. What is gaseous under normal conditions, from gas ； The liquid form, from water ； Solid metallic elements, starting with gold ； Solid non-metallic elements, from stone”. Simply put, when we see the name of a chemical element that contains the character for \"gas\", it refers to a gaseous non-metallic element ； Elements with the \" 氵 \" radical are liquid non-metal elements ； It has the metal character in it and belongs to metal elements ； It contains the character for \"stone\" and belongs to solid non-metallic elements ； Mercury is a metal element and is the only exception.
1. Homophonic naming: Most of the Chinese names for chemical elements are created by transliterating the first or second syllable of the element’s Latin name, using homophonic characters; additional character components are then used to roughly indicate the element’s category. For example, the English name for lithium is Lithium; the first syllable is “Li—”, which sounds like “li”. Since lithium in its pure form is a metal, the character meaning “metal” is added, resulting in the character “ Lithium””； Sodium in Latin is Natrium; the first syllable, na—pronounced “na”, was changed with the radical for \"gold\" to become \"sodium\". Furthermore, the names of elements such as calcium, beryllium, iodine, selenium, and nickel were all created based on this principle. In our country, the Latin pronunciation of element symbols* is conventionally based on the pronunciation of English letters. For newly created Chinese characters, the pronunciation generally involves pronouncing only half of the character’s phonetic components; for example, 氪 is pronounced like “ke”, 镁 like “mei”, and 碘 like “dian”. But it’s not entirely the case, such as xenon (Xian), tantalum (Tan), chlorine (Lv), etc. 2. Meaning-based naming: When creating characters through meaning representation, characters are formed based on the characteristics of the elemental substances. For example: Nitrogen – the Latin meaning is “cannot sustain life”. In our country, it was translated as “light air,” meaning air that has been diluted. Later, “yan” was combined with “qi” to form “nitrogen”. Chlorine – the Latin word means “green”. In our country, it was translated as “Lüqi”, meaning “green gas”. Later, “lu” was combined with “qi” to form “chlorine”. Hydrogen – the Latin word means “source of water”. In our country, it was translated as “light gas,” and its elemental form is the lightest gas. Later, the right half of “light” is combined with “qi” to form “hydrogen”. Oxygen – the Latin word means “the source of acids”. In our country, it was translated as “yangqi”; later, based on the similar sound of “yang”, the term “oxygen” was created. 3. Retaining old names: Among chemical elements, in addition to those given new Chinese characters, some elements retain their ancient names, such as gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, sulfur, etc.
He has achieved a great deal; this accomplishment is just one of them
If I had known about such naming principles in the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, it wouldn’t have been so difficult to memorize the English names of the elements. Back in the day, over those really hard-to-remember words, I lost quite a few hairs :(