The Academician

This book is the first monograph to study the processes of establishing and reconstructing the academician system, and the landmark events in the history of science and technology in 20th century China. It also provides new insights to help us understand the process of scientific institutionalization in modern China. Drawing on detailed archive records, it discusses the process of the establishment of the Academia Sinica's academician system in the Republic of China, as well as the unique and tortuous transformation process from members of the Academic Divisions(学部委员)to academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院)in the People's Republic of China. These play an important part of China's modernization process, and reflect scientific institutionalization in China. The book also highlights the fact that under the leadership of the government, the academic elite became participants in the construction of national academic system after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Luzin" is an important contribution toward the understanding of the fate of a great mathematician in Stalin's time. We learn here the details of how he was judged in a political trial. I would like to immodestly suggest that reading this source together with Jean-Michel Kantor's and my recent book "Naming Infinity" will clarify an episode in both the history of mathematics and of the Soviet Union that has long mystified observers.-Loren Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science, MIT and Harvard

Lake Baikal is the oldest lake and largest freshwater reservoir in the world. As a result of its exceptionally long geological history, the lake has been a theatre of evolution and speciation of organisms, and it currently harbors more species than any other lake in the world. Based on its unique nature, Lake Baikal was recently designated a World Heritage site and is regarded as a hotspot for evolution, speciation, and biodiversity. With its tremendously peculiar biota, Lake Baikal is now awaiting modern analytical approaches to the profound problems of speciation and evolution. In late autumn 1998 a symposium was held in Japan with the theme "Lake Baikal: A mirror in time and space for understanding global change processes" to bring together scientists from different disciplines who are studying Lake Baikal. Three international scientific associations: The BICER (Baikal International Center for Ecological Research), BDP (Baikal Drilling Project), and DIWPA (Diversitas Western Pacific and Asia) were involved in the organisation. This book contains a selection of papers presented at this symposium. They are interdisciplinary in nature and bring together results from geology, paleontology, chemistry, biology, limnology and physics.