Taylor Wang

Taylor Gun-Jin Wang (simplified Chinese: 王赣骏; traditional Chinese: 王贛駿; pinyin: Wáng Gànjùn) (born June 16, 1940) is an American scientist and in 1985, became the first ethnic Chinese person to go into space. While an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wang was a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-B.

Early life and education

With ancestry in Yancheng, Jiangsu, China, Wang was born in Jiangxi to Wang Zhang (王章) and Yu Jiehong (俞潔虹). He moved to Taiwan in 1952 with his family. He studied his later part of elementary school in Kaohsiung, and graduated from The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. He later moved to Hong Kong. He started studying physics in UCLA in 1963, and received his Bachelor of Science in 1967, and his Master of Science in 1968, and his doctoral in low temperature physics - Superfluid and solid state physics in 1971.

Career and research

After completing his doctorate, Wang joined the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 1972, as a senior scientist. At JPL he was responsible for the inception and development of containerless processing science and technology research. He was the Principal Investigator (PI) on the Spacelab 3 mission NASA Drop Dynamics (DDM) experiments, PI on the NASA SPAR Flight Experiment #77-18 "Dynamics of Liquid Bubble," PI on the NASA SPAR Flight Experiment #76-20 "Containerless Processing Technology," and PI on the Department of Energy Experiment "Spherical Shell Technology."