Recently, I found myself in a conversation about the concept of private experimental labs—spaces where individuals, with some training, could pay to conduct experiments. On the surface, it sounds liberating, but I couldn’t shake the unease that this would make science even more of an elite pursuit than it already is. After all, science thrives on collaboration, shared knowledge, and rigorous training. Yet, history reminds us that not all contributions to science have come through formal institutions or collective laboratories. Some emerged from solitary searches, driven by individuals whose curiosity and persistence overcame the absence of public spaces or recognition. Jiang Hui, a 19th-century Chinese woman who made her own star charts, was one such figure.
Jiang Hui, Made on Canva @Thinkher
Born in 1839 in Sichuan province, Jiang Hui grew up in an intellectual household. Her father, Jiang Hanchun, was a writer and recluse with wide-ranging interests in alchemy, astronomy, and poetry. Under his guidance, she began studying astronomy as a child, memorising verses that described the movements of the stars and gradually turning to direct observations of the night sky. By the time she was only eleven or twelve, she was sketching her own star charts. Her first effort, drawn on a fan, was titled "Tianwen Shan" (Astronomical Fan).
What makes Jiang Hui remarkable is also the persistence with which she refined her work. In her teenage years, she came across an anonymous astronomical treatise, "Zhongxing tu kao" (An Illustrated Treatise of the Transit-Stars), and decided it was insufficient. Over the course of a year, between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, she revised it repeatedly, producing her own version, "Zhongxing tu zhu" (An Illustrated Work of the Transit-Stars). In it, she adjusted star positions, added new asterisms (recognisable patterns that are not defined as constellations), and rewrote accompanying verses. She signed the manuscript with a postscript in 1855, noting with characteristic modesty that she intended it to remain private.
After she married the scholar Song Nan, Jiang Hui ceased her astronomical pursuits. For years, her manuscripts lay hidden. But in 1874, Song Nan shared her work with a friend, who praised it enthusiastically. Eventually, in 1880, with the encouragement of Beijing scholars, her star charts were published under the title 'Map of Transit-Stars in the Twenty-four Solar Terms'. Her work was not flawless—modern historians note errors in her calculations of sunrise and sunset times—but her strength lay in her keen observational ability and the care with which she repositioned and clarified the stars. What mattered was not mathematical perfection but the fact that she had managed, largely on her own, to make a place for herself in the long tradition of Chinese astronomy.
There is little record of what became of Jiang Hui after the publication of her charts. Her life, like her stars, seems to have receded into the distance. But the significance of her contribution lies in the circumstances under which it was made. Women in 19th-century China had virtually no institutional access to science. Yet Jiang Hui carved out her own practice of sky-watching.
Jiang Hui’s life may not have altered the course of astronomy, but it illuminates a simple truth: science is not only the work of institutions, but also of individuals who, against the odds, look up at the night sky and refuse to stop wondering.
Written by Janaky S. and edited by Parvathy Ramachandran
Reference:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Hui
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