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Tsai Chiao: The founder of physiology and aviation, aerospace and navigation medicine in China

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On February 16th, 2019, Tsai Academician Museum held a launch ceremony of a minor planet (207681)’s settling in Jieyang County, Guangdong Province. This minor planet was given a new name… Click to show full abstract

On February 16th, 2019, Tsai Academician Museum held a launch ceremony of a minor planet (207681)’s settling in Jieyang County, Guangdong Province. This minor planet was given a new name Cai Qiao (Fig. 1) on October 14th, 2011. Cai Qiao was discovered at Xu Yi Station in the Purple Hills Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on August 16th, 2007. So who is the planet named after? Tsai Chiao (蔡翘, 1897–1990) (Fig. 2) styled name was Zhuofu (卓夫), infant name was Yizhong (义忠). As one of the founders of Chinese physiology, Tsai promoted the development of Chinese physiology and also furthered the prosperity of international neuroanatomy. He was also the originator of China's aviation, aerospace and navigation medicine, who initially established China’s aviation physiological system. October 11th, 1897, Tsai was born in Xianmei Country, Xinheng Town, Jiedong Distinct, Jieyang City, Guangdong Province. Tsai went to an old-style private school when he was 7, and subsequently transferred to Lam Tin Government Elementary School. In 1913, he received education from Jinshan Academy located at Chaoan County, Guangdong Province, and graduated in 1917. In 1918, he received further education from Shanghai Fudan University Attached Middle School to improve his English. The same year, he became an external student of the Chinese Department of Peking University. In the autumn of 1919, deeply influenced by the cultural trend “Saving the Country through Science” of May 4th Movement, he went to America at his own expense. Affected by behavioral psychologist Zing-Yang Kuo (郭任 远) (Qian et al., 2018), Tsai studied a regular college course for two years, firstly at Psychology Department, California University, and then transferred to the same department at Indiana University. In the winter of 1921, he entered the University of Columbia as a postgraduate. From 1922 to 1925, he transferred to the Department of Physiology, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Chicago to take more postgraduate courses. During this period, Professor Harvey A. Carr of comparative psychology supervised Tsai’s study and Tsai majored mainly in psychology, minored in physiology and neuroanatomy. In 1924, Tsai gained a philosophic doctor degree with the doctoral thesis A comparative study of retention curves for motor habits in which he further investigated the differences of memory retention between white rats and humans on a stylus maze problem (Tsai, 1924). In 1925, at the Hull Laboratory of Anatomy of Chicago University (Fig. 3), Tsai explored “the optic tracts and centers of the opossum (Tsai, 1925a)” and described its “descending tracts and related structures of the thalamus and midbrain (Tsai, 1925b)”. In his exploration, Tsai described in great detail the ventral mesencephalic tegmentum where the nucleus pretectalis is located. This area is called Tsai’s area or ventral area of Tsai. In addition, Tsai proved the fact that “the normal food-seeking impulse in the albino rat as measured by the choice method is stronger than that of sex (Tsai, 1925c)” against the Freudian conception that the sex urge is the strongest of all human motives. The same year Tsai was awarded Chicago University’s Gold Key Award and recommended as a member of the American Association of Anatomists. In the autumn of 1925, Tsai returned back to China. With the support of Zing-Yang Kuo, the vice-president of Fudan University, Tsai constructed biology discipline at Psychology College, Fudan University, taught biology and physiology, and cultivated a bunch of researchers like Yanfeng Hsü (徐 丰彦), Depei Feng (冯德培), Henian Chu (朱鹤年). In 1927, Tsai served as a Physiology Professor in the Medical Colleague of National Central University in Shanghai. Tsai acted as editor of the first textbook called Physiology, the first textbook of physiology in China, which was published in 1929 as part of a college book series. After that, Tsai also compiled 10 more Chinese physiology books including Physiology Experiment, Exercise Physiology and the

Keywords: medicine; tsai; physiology; university; biology; psychology

Journal Title: Protein & Cell
Year Published: 2020

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