Hsu Yun-chi

Hsu Yun-chi (Chinese: 許雲基; 16 July 1924 – 2025) was a Taiwanese nuclear physicist from Taichung, Taiwan. After graduating from Taichung First Senior High School, Hsu studied at Kochi High School in Japan and then at the Faculty of Engineering of Kyoto Imperial University. After the war, he transferred to the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University and graduated from that department. In 1947, Hsu became an assistant in the Department of Physics, National Taiwan University. Together with Dai Yungui, Ota Yoritsune and others, he helped reconstruct the Cockcroft–Walton generator built at NTU by the team of Bunsaku Arakatsu, which had previously completed the world's second artificial nuclear disintegration experiment. In 1948, the group successfully completed the first artificial nuclear disintegration experiment in Taiwan and in post-war Asia. He later took over the nuclear physics laboratory led by Ota Yoritsune, and led Taiwanese technicians in repeatedly improving the laboratory's equipment, making it one of Asia's most advanced nuclear laboratories in the 1960s. Hsu was promoted from assistant to lecturer, associate professor and professor, and became chair of the NTU Department of Physics in 1962. He retired from the NTU Department of Physics in 1985 and became professor emeritus in 1989. Beginning in 2005, he led the reconstruction of the nuclear physics laboratory into the NTU Museum of Physics.

Life

Early life Hsu Yun-chi was born in 1924 in Waipu Village, Dajia District, Taichū Prefecture, Taiwan under Japanese rule. After graduating from Taichung Prefectural First Middle School—today Taichung First Senior High School—he went to Japan to study at Kochi High School. After graduating, he was admitted to the Faculty of Engineering of Kyoto Imperial University. While studying there, he attended courses taught by Bunsaku Arakatsu and learned that Kiichi Kimura and others in the university's atomic nucleus laboratory were conducting nuclear experiments. After World War II, Hsu transferred from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Kyoto Imperial University to the Department of Electrical Engineering at NTU, graduating in the summer of 1947. Shortly before graduation, Zhang Tiaoxu, an assistant in the Department of Chemistry and Hsu's classmate at Taichung First Senior High School, recommended him to the nuclear disintegration experimental group of the Department of Physics, National Taiwan University. Associate professor Ota Yoritsune hoped that Hsu would report for duty the day after graduation. Hsu, however, first returned to his family home in Dajia for a period of rest and did not return to Taipei until late September, formally beginning work in the NTU Department of Physics in October. For this, Hsu received a severe reprimand. According to Xu Zhongping, Hsu Yun-chi was gentle and modest, and often unconsciously covered his mouth with one hand while speaking, a habit he retained into old age.

Career at the NTU Department of Physics

After Hsu reported to Ota Yoritsune in October 1947 and became an assistant in the department, Ota arranged for him to live in a red-brick house behind the meteorological building. Hsu first repaired the department's Geiger counter and then began learning vacuum techniques. Hsu then followed Dai Yungui and Ota Yoritsune, working with Kawada Suekichi and Taiwanese technicians including Xu Yuchuan, Zhou Mucun and Lin Songyun, to reassemble the Cockcroft–Walton generator made at NTU by Arakatsu's team, which had completed the world's second artificial nuclear disintegration experiment. To obtain sufficient experimental materials, they borrowed from the better-supplied Department of Chemistry and obtained discarded vacuum tubes, large shell casings and other items from the Broadcasting Corporation of China and Taiwan Power Company. The accelerator reconstruction project began in October 1946. On 13 May 1948 at 8:35 p.m., the team used high-speed protons to strike lithium, splitting it into two alpha particles and completing the first artificial nuclear disintegration experiment in Taiwan and post-war Asia. On 20 June of the same year, they repeated the experiment and confirmed the reproducibility of the results. To keep pace with the work, Hsu left his newly married wife at his family home in Dajia and often slept overnight in the laboratory with Ota Yoritsune, Xu Yuchuan and Lin Songyun, continuing work after waking. The accelerator is now displayed by National Taiwan University in the NTU Museum of Physics, the former nuclear laboratory of the physics chair. Recalling the construction of the accelerator, Hsu said, “Hey! How did we have so much energy back then?” When asked whether they feared electric leakage and radiation from the accelerator, he replied:

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