Joseph Needham travelled to Bucharest from 24 Aug. to 13 Sep. to attend the 16th International Congress for the History of Science (ICHoS). The conference was held from 26 Aug. to 3 Sep. A tour of north-east Romania was arranged to see the mountain churches and medieval frescos, followed by a rest at the Black Sea.
He visited China to see friends, especially at the Academia Sinica Institutes and the National Academy for Social Sciences. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Joseph Needham was made an Honorary Professor of the ‘History of Science Institute of the National Academy’ [Institute of the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences?] and he chose to visit members of the Institute. He wanted to visit Shanghai to meet friends and members of the editorial board of a ‘festschrift’ to be published in honour of his 80th birthday. He and Lu Gwei-Djen also travelled to Nanking to visit her family.
He travelled to Japan to give lectures for the National Institute of Research Advancement (NIRA).
He then travelled to Hong Kong to ‘participate in an appeal for funds by our Hong Kong Trust.’ He attended a reception in City Hall on 14 Oct. to launch the appeal for an endowment.
Joseph Needham was accompanied by Lu Gwei-Djen on this trip.
Part of the reason for the visit was to invite financial support for forthcoming volumes of Science and Civilisation in China, to recruit Japanese scientific collaborators to write volumes, to discuss the translation into Japanese of published volumes, and to invite financial support for a purpose-built East Asian History of Science building in Cambridge. He wrote to Peter Lisowski on 3 Jun. 1981 ‘this trip is definitely a "business" one.’
For a detailed analysis of the Japanese section of the visit see NRI2/5/8/10.
He travelled to Rome because the publishers Einaudi of Torino published the first volume of their Italian translation of Science and Civilisation in China.
Itinerary:
Depart London 24 Aug. 1981
Bucharest 24 Aug. - 13 Sep.
Beijing 14 Sep. - 19 Sep.
Shanghai 19 Sep. - 24 Sep.
Tokyo 24 Sep. - 11 Oct.
Hong Kong 11 Oct. - 28 Oct.
Rome 29 Oct. - 31 Oct.
London 31 Oct..