---
title: "Hua Luogeng"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Luogeng"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:02:48.001787+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Later career in China (1950–1985) ===
Back in China, Hua threw himself into educational reform and the organization of mathematical activity at the graduate level, in the schools, and among workers in the burgeoning industry. In July 1952 the Mathematical Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) came into being, with Hua as its first director. In 1953, he was one of a 26-member delegation from CAS to visit the Soviet Union to establish links with Russian science. Later, he was the first chair of the Department of Mathematics and Vice President of University of Science & Technology of China (USTC), a new type of Chinese university established by CAS in 1958, aimed at fostering skilled researchers necessary for the economic development, defense and education in science and technology.
Despite his many teaching and administrative duties, Hua remained active in research and continued to write, not only on topics that had engaged him before but also in areas that were new to him or had been only lightly touched on before. In 1956, his voluminous text Introduction to Number Theory appeared. It was later published in English by Springer. Harmonic Analysis of Functions of Several Complex Variables in the Classical Domains came out in 1958 and was translated into Russian in the same year, followed by an English translation by the American Mathematical Society in 1963.
Outside of pure math, Hua first proposed in 1952 the development of China's electronic computer, and in early 1953, an initial research team for this project was formed under Hua's leadership by the Mathematical Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The start of the Great Leap Forward in 1958 came with a vehement attack on pure mathematics and intellectuals, prompting Hua to shift to applied mathematics. He and Wang Yuan developed a broad interest in linear programming, operations research, and multidimensional numerical integration. In connection with the last of these, the study of the Monte Carlo method and the role of uniform distribution led them to invent an alternative deterministic method based on ideas from algebraic number theory. Their theory was set out in Applications of Number Theory to Numerical Analysis, which was published in 1978, and by Springer in English translation in 1981. The newfound interest in applicable mathematics took him in the 1960s, accompanied by a team of assistants, all over China to show workers of all kinds how to apply their reasoning to shop-floor and everyday problems. Whether in ad hoc problem-solving sessions in factories or open-air teachings, he touched his audiences with the spirit of mathematics to such an extent that he became a national hero and even earned an unsolicited letter of commendation from Mao Zedong, a valuable protection in uncertain times. Hua had a commanding presence, a genial personality, and a talent for putting things simply, and his travels spread his fame and the popularity of mathematics across the land.
After the Cultural Revolution, Hua resumed contact with Western mathematicians. In 1980 Hua became a cultural ambassador of China charged with re-establishing links with Western academics, and over the next five years he traveled extensively in Europe, the United States, and Japan. In 1979 he was a visiting research fellow of the then Science Research Council of the United Kingdom at the University of Birmingham and during 1983–84 he was Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. He died of a heart attack at the end of a lecture he gave in Tokyo on 12 June 1985.
Hua Luogeng Park in Jintan, Jiangsu, is named after him.

== Works ==
Additive Theory of Prime Numbers (Translations of Mathematical Monographs : Vol 13). Amer Mathematical Society. 1966. ISBN 978-0-8218-1563-2.
Introduction to Number Theory. Springer. 1987. ISBN 978-3-540-10818-4.
Hua, Loo-keng (1981). Starting with the Unit Circle: Background to Higher Analysis. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-0-387-90589-1.
Loo-keng Hua: Selected Papers. Berlin: Springer Verlag. 1983. ISBN 978-0-387-90744-4.

== References ==

== External links ==

Hua Luogeng at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Hua Luogeng", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
Biographical memoir – by Heini Halberstam
Biography of Loo-Keng Hua – from MacTutor History of Mathematics from University of St Andrews
Hua Loo-Keng : a biography by Wang Yuan
Heini Halberstam, "Loo-Keng Hua", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2002)