Historical Record of Chinese Americans | Qian Xuesen – Under the Shadow of McCarthyism
Qian Xuesen（Hsue-Shen Tsien) was a Chinese engineer and physicist who contributed to aerodynamics and rocket science in the United States. Recruited from MIT, he joined Theodore von Karman’s group at Caltech. In the 1950s, the US government accused him of communist sympathies and stripped of his security clearance. He was forced to return to China, but was detained at Terminal Island, near Los Angeles for over 10 days. After spending five years under the fight between the deportation order and house arrest, he was released in 1955 in exchange for the repatriation of American pilots who had been captured during the Korean War. Upon his return to China, he made important contributions to China’s missile and space program.
