On June 25, 1956, the opening ceremony of the Third Soviet Congress of Mathematics
was held in Moscow. The conference was attended by more than 2,000 Soviet
scientists and young scholars, and also by more than 60 leading scholars from the
USA, UK, China, France, Italy, Sweden, India, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and
other countries. The opening session was followed by a breakout session in which a
Chinese scientist gave a presentation on The Poincaré-Lighthill-Kuo Method in the
session "Mathematical Problems in Mechanics" from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. on June
27. This Chinese scientist was Qian Xuesen (also known as Tsien Hsue-Shen), who
had just returned to China from the United States and was by now the Director of the
Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Invited by the Soviet
Academy of Sciences, Qian Xuesen, together with his wife Jiang Ying, had this visit
from June 20 to July 21. Qian was accompanied by his own Russian translator, Wu
Hongqing, Assistant Professor of the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics at
Peking University.
On June 20, Qian Xuesen and his party arrived in Moscow by plane. They were
met by Yuri Ivanovich Shaslov, a staff member of the Foreign Liaison Bureau of the
USSR Academy of Sciences, and the staff of the Chinese Embassy in the USSR. It
was a high-profile reception, and the USSR Academy of Sciences earmarked 53,066
rubles for the reception, covering air tickets, transportation, accommodation, banquet
meals, translation fee and admission tickets on the tour. This staff member of the
Foreign Liaison Bureau, who participated in the Patriotic War, accompanied him
throughout the trip and was responsible for the security of the entire trip.
After returning to China from the visit, Wu Hongqing drafted a report entitled
"Observations on the visit to the Soviet Academy of Sciences", which was revised
and reviewed by Qian Xuesen himself and submitted to the Chinese Academy of
Sciences. Through this valuable report, people learned the whole process of Qian
Xuesen's visit and the reason for his high standard reception by the Soviet Academy
of Sciences. From the report, it can be seen that Qian's visit included three kinds of
activities: reports, symposiums and visits.
