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| Wang Zhenyi, linocut, 11" x14" by Ele Willoughby, 2026 |
For the 12th and final #PrinterSolstice2526 prompt multiplication, I have chose Qing era polymath - astronomer, mathematician, meteorologist and poet - Wang Zhenyi (王贞仪), who amongst her accomplishments in her brief life, was a book on mathematics for young readers with simplified rules for multiplication and division, to help children learn even those she lived when formal education for girls was rare. In the absence of any known portraits, I made my print after researching Qing Dynasty pavilions, lanterns, tables and mirrors, along with women's fashions and available astronomical instruments in China in the 1790s.
Astronomer, mathematician, meteorologist and poet Wang Zhenyi (1768-1797) left her impact on Qing era China during her short life. Raised by her father and grandparents, her ancestral home was in Anhui province. Her grandfather, Wang Zhefu, an avid reader and collector of books, was governor of Fengcheng County and the Xuanhua District. When her father, Wang Xichen failed the imperial examination to enter the civil service, he decided instead to study medicine, and wrote a 4-volume Collection of Medical Prescriptions. While many Qing women were denied literacy and education, Zhenyi absorbed it all: astronomy from her grandfather, poetry from her grandmother Dong, medicine, geography and mathematics from her father. When she was 9, her grandfather died and the family travelled to Jilin near the Great Wall to mourn and attend his ornate funeral. They remained there for five years. While there, Zhenyi and three other upper-class girls studied under the Lady of Bu Qianyao, and she was able to read her grandfather's library with its full 75 bookcases. She also learned to ride, do archery on horseback and martial arts from the wife of the Mongolian General Aa. She became an expert mounted markswoman. On her own, she began further exploring mathematics and astronomy, reading Chinese texts, and Western classics like Euclid's Elements.
Zhenyi then travelled with her grandmother and father, visiting Beijing, Shaanxi, Hubei, Guangdong and Anhui. This unusual experience exposed her to more history and more breadth of society than was common for most young women. She and her father travelled south of the Yangtze river, before moving back to the capital and settling in Nanjing when she was 16. At 18, her poetry united her with female scholars in Jangling, and she began to focus on mathematics and astronomy. At 25, deemed late to marry at the time, she married Zhan Mei from Xuancheng in her home province. Their marriage was happy but they had no offspring. She gained fame from her poetry, mathematics and astronomy knowledge. She advanced meteorology to work on weather forecasts for farmers. She even took on some male students, an extraordinarily uncommon thing for a young woman scholar at the time.
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| Flemish Jesuit missionary and polymath Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), known as Nan Huairen in Chinese, became Director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, introduced updated armillary spheres, sextants and celestial globes to China and had them adorned with Chinese motifs. He reformed the inaccurate Chinese calendar and diplomatically fostered Sino-European scientific exchange. |
The Qing Dynasty closed door policy meant that astronomy in China was isolated from advancements that were being made in the West. Jesuit missionaries had shared the works of Copernicus, Galileo and Brahe. Copernicus' model was shared as a useful tool rather than a doctrine, so they could both avoid Church ire and respect local traditions. However, Newton's Principia, including his universal law of gravitation, was not available in a Chinese edition until 1850. When Wang Zhenyi took pains to explain how we could live on a globe without falling off, she was doing so without benefit of an explanation of gravity.
She wrote Dispute of the Procession of the Equinoxes using her observations of celestial phenomena, explaining how equinoxes, the two days each year in the spring and fall when days are nights are equal length, move and how to calculate their movements. Using both her observations and astronomical texts, she wrote about the number of stars, the direction of the revolution of the sun, moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Saturn, as well as describing lunar and solar eclipses. Only a small fraction of her works survive. Later articles included Dispute of Longitude and Stars, Explanation of Lunar Eclipses, and Explanation of the Starry Sky. Zhenyi was interested in the causes of lunar eclipses and published her correct understanding in Explanation of Lunar Eclipses. She summarized astronomical theories, from Yu Xi (307-345) who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, to Gui Shoujing (1231-1316) who is credited with inventing the gnomon and a water powered armillary sphere, and managed to calculate the length of a year as 365.2425 days (mere seconds short of the modern value). She connected these scholars' work with Islamic, Western and modern calendars. At a time when many of her contemporaries would attribute an eclipse to the anger of the gods, she bluntly wrote, "In fact, it's definitely because of the moon." She made a demonstration in an outdoor pavilion to show that how these phenomena could be simply explained by the relative motion of Earth (represented by a round table), moon (represented by a mirror) and sun (represented by a suspended round crystal lamp). Moving these three, as celestial bodies would move she could explain lunar eclipses. She could show how the Earth's shadow could pass over the Moon. She explained that a lunar eclipse can only happen during a full moon, and a solar eclipse can only happen during a new moon, but only when the alignment is right. Her work also cleared up misunderstandings about celestial mechanics and addressed the gradual shift in stellar positions. She affirmed the Earth is a sphere, writing the Theory of the Earth's Roundness, refuting ideas of a flat Earth. In The Geocentric Theory of the Annual Cycle, she made the case for a heliocentric system. She was a proponent of the Western sun-based, heliocentric calendar over the lunar calendar, for its precision and advocated for its adoption. She argued people needed to be open to new scientific and mathematical ideas, regardless of their origin.
To improve weather-forecasting she worked on calculating atmospheric humidity. She investigated making better predictions of floods and droughts, understanding that Chinese farmers suffered in extreme weather conditions.
She mastered the book Principles of Calculation by famed early Qing dynasty mathematician Mei Wending (1633-1721). Knowing the challenge of trying to teach oneself mathematics, she rewrote it in simpler, more accessible language as The Musts of Calculation. To further make mathematics easier for beginners, she developed simplified means of performing multiplication and division. By the time she was 24, this work culminated in her writing The Simple Principles of Calculation. Another math text which she wrote and survives today, is the Explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem and Trigonometry.
She complained that anyone with access to medical books could believe themselves experts and dispense risky medical advice. Though widely read, and taught by her father, she refrained from treating her own ailments. On the other hand, she advised being wary of quacks, and speaking up on if necessary. When her female cousin was given a prescription, she checked her pulse and consulted books on female health. She condemned the physician's prescription as unsuitable for a woman. She emphasized the use of preventative medicine and clearly had practical medical knowledge.
She wrote 13 volumes of poetry which were well-received, praised for their strength and clarity. Her style was not feminine and flowery, as was more common amongst female poets. She wrote about the classics, the history she learned travelling with her father, ordinary working people, the plight of women and the contrast between rich and poor. Her poems showed her compassion for people she encountered. She wrote about the wealthy hoarding rice until it rotted, while the poor faced starvation and how the increasing tax burden impacted rural regions. She faced criticism when she published her poems for pursuing fame and literary writing. She wrote that she "dare not defend herself" since she should adhere to Confucian ethics and its prescriptions for the roles of women, but she also wrote that the classics were intended for both men and women. Thus, it was stubborn and careless to insist that women should not read. She wrote,
It's made to believe,
Women are the same as Men;
Are you not convinced?
Daughters can also be heroic?
She pointed out that both women and men, "are all people, who have the same reasons for studying."
She died when she was only 29, likely after a relapse of malaria. Before she died, she entrusted her manuscripts to her friend Qian Yuling, who in 1803 passed them on to her nephew Qian Yiji. He compiled her mathematics texts and wrote a preface praising her achievements. Most of her works have since been lost and are known only through references from other writers. Her work helped bridge the gap between Western and Chinese astronomy and modernize Chinese astronomical understanding. Two hundred years later, her impact is being acknowledged. In 1994 the International Astronomical Union's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature approved a small crater on Venus has being named in her honour. We can only wonder what such a prolific and insightful scholar as she might have achieved had she lived a longer life.
References
Astronomy Week 2025: Honouring the Life and Legacy of Wang Zhenyi, School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh. Accessed March, 2026.
Bernardi, Gabriela. Wang Zhenyi (1768-1797). In: The Forgotten Sisters. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26127-0_23
DeBakcszy, Dale. Champion of Chinese Heliocentrism: The Stellar Mathematics of Wang Zhenyi. The Women in Science Archive. April 25, 2023.
Lutz, R.C. Wang Zhenyi, EBSCO Knowledge Advantage. Accessed March, 2026.
Mehta, Devang. The prolific life of Wang Zhenyi, autodidact, astronomer and poet. Massive Science. November 3, 2017.
Wang Zhenyi (astronomer), Wikipedia, accessed March, 2026
Wang Zhenyi (王贞仪) – Mirror, Wellesley University blog, accessed March, 2026.
Wing-Chung Ho, Clara. The Cultivation of Female Talent: Views on Women's Education in China During the Early and High Qing Periods. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.
Yang, Binbin. Guardians of Family Health in Qing China: From the Exemplary Wife to the Reformer. Modern China.
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