1562, Xu Guangqi was born in the county seat of Shanghai. Our ancestors moved from Suzhou to Shanghai to make a living by farming. Grandfather gave up agriculture and became rich in business, but due to the enemy's rebellion, his family declined. His father is still a farmer, while his grandmother Yin and his mother Qian work hard to supplement their home textiles. They put all their hopes on Xu Guangqi, who is smart and strong, and strive to cultivate them.
Xu Guangqi has been very independent since childhood. He is brave and tenacious. It's very cold in winter, the ground is icy and slippery, and other children are afraid of wrestling. But he's not afraid. As he ran, he shouted, "I want to run first!" "
He is very naughty. Once, there were pigeons on the Longhua Tower. He climbed the tower to catch pigeons. Seeing him get up, everyone closed their eyes, fearing that he would fall. But he was not afraid at all. He muttered casually, "Pigeon, you asked me to climb to the top of the tower to catch you!" " "
When Xiao Guangqi reached the age of going to school, the family decided to scrimp and save for him to go to school. So he scraped together enough tuition fees and sent him to school. His father said to him, "the family is not well off, but it is for your future success." It is not easy to get into school. You must study hard! "
Since entering school, Xiao Guangqi has never been naughty or playful. Before dawn, he got up and endorsed; After school, I went home and hid in my room to do my homework. I often ask my mother to call him at dinner, sometimes several times.
Thanks to hard work, Xu Guangqi is among the best in every exam. Both parents are happy with Xu Guangqi's achievements. They said, even if you can't eat, you should study for Guangqi.
Xu Guangqi is also very concerned about knowledge beyond books. He pays great attention to observing life. One day, he saw grandma spinning. There were three spindles on the spinning wheel. He asked, "Grandma, why does your spinning wheel have three spindles and Grandma only uses one spindle?" Grandma said, "The spinning wheel your grandmother uses is an ordinary spinning wheel. The spinning wheel I use was invented by Huang Daopo. One person can support three people. " Xu Guangqi asked, "Who is Huang Daopo?" Grandma said, "Huang Daopo was from the Southern Song Dynasty. She was born into a miserable family. When she was a teenager, she wandered to Hainan and began to learn textile technology from the local Li people. Later, when she returned to her hometown, she passed on the technology to everyone. She is the ancestor of our textile industry, and people respect her very much. She made statues and words for her in her hometown. " Xu Guangqi said, "Huang Daopo is really something!"
Xu Guangqi loves his hometown, countryside and crops. In his spare time, he often goes to the fields to help his father with farm work. He thinks his father works too hard on the farm. How to make people who do farm work less hard is a problem he often thinks about.
Once, he passed by Grandpa Zhang De's cotton field and saw Grandpa Zhang De take off the top core of cotton. He asked, "Grandpa, why did you take off the top core of cotton?" Is it good for the growth of cotton? " Grandpa Zhang De said, "This is a good question. After beginning of autumn, new cotton branches did not bear cotton peaches. If the top core is not removed, it will grow wildly and suck all the nutrients, which will directly affect the maturity of cotton peaches. If the top core is removed, it will control the growth of branches of non-cotton peaches, concentrate nutrition on cotton peaches, make cotton peaches grow plump and harvest more cotton. " Grandpa Zhang De showed Xu Guangqi the cotton top core, let him know and taught him how to take it off. Guangqi remembered what Grandpa Zhang De had taught him. Grandpa Zhang De is an expert in growing cotton. He's experienced. It's right to listen to him. So, Xu Guangqi went home and did as he said. At first, his father didn't believe him and kept stopping him. To this end, the father and son also quarreled. But when Xu Guangqi said that grandpa Zhang De taught him to do this, his father had nothing to say.
Especially when he saw that cotton was growing well, Xu Guangqi's father was convinced. In autumn, cotton in Xu Guangqi thrives and gets a bumper harvest. My father said happily, "It's a clever way to adopt the' boosting nuclear power'!"
Xu Guangqi learned that growing cotton requires knowledge. So, I found many agricultural books of past dynasties, such as The Book of Victory, The Book of Qi, The Summary of Agriculture and Mulberry, The Book of Wang Zhennong and so on.
Xu Guangqi studied hard, and finally was admitted as a scholar at the age of 20 in 158 1 year, and won the first prize in 1597. When he took the exam at the age of 35, his chance finally came. It is said that his paper was thrown aside by the examiner from the beginning, and he was doomed to "fall out of Sun Shan". However, just two days before the list was published, Jiao Hong, a knowledgeable examiner, happened to see Xu Guangqi's paper, so he "clapped his hands". When he saw the third game, he was surprised and said, "There is no doubt that this famous scholar is a great scholar!" " Therefore, Xu Guangqi was chosen as the first person in this exam. As a result, Xu Guangqi suddenly became popular all over the country. Its articles, until the Qing Dynasty, were compiled into "A hundred concise articles on reading ink", which were read by scholars all over the country. Since then, after seven years of hard work, he finally got the Jinshi at the age of 42.
Different from many literati at that time, Xu Guangqi studied only to be famous. Once he became famous, he stopped making progress. On the contrary, after he entered imperial academy, his thirst for knowledge became more intense. He has a wide range of interests, especially natural science books, which he always reads with relish and can't put down. 1600, he met Italian missionary Matteo Ricci. The prism, clock, sundial and map of the world brought by this missionary aroused his keen interest in western natural science. Since then, a desire to improve China's scientific and technological level by translating western scientific and technological books has sprouted in his mind.
The first western science and technology book he translated was Matteo Ricci's Elements of Geometry. This book was originally written by Euclid, a famous mathematician in ancient Greece in the third century BC. It has been praised by mathematicians all over the world and used as a standard textbook in many countries. The missionary Matteo Ricci dictated the book easily because he had already learned it. And Xu Guangqi will work hard, because he needs not only the fluency of words, but also the translation of some proper nouns, which is easy to understand on the premise of accurate meaning. Fortunately, Xu Guangqi is a very determined scholar, who chewed up the book Geometry in just two years. His translation was quite successful, and Liang Qichao, a great writer in modern times, praised it as "a masterpiece of careful choice of words and beautiful jade."
The appearance of the Chinese version of Geometry Elements not only solved the needs of the society at that time, but also laid the foundation for the mathematical research in Qing Dynasty. In particular, many terms translated by him are still used by the mathematical circles in China, among which point, line, surface, right angle, quadrilateral, polygon, parallel line, diagonal line, similarity and circumscribed line are all well known. The word "geometry" was originally a function word in Chinese, but it became a professional term after being used by Xu Guangqi. He also wrote about Pythagoras' meaning and measurement similarities and differences, and compared Chinese and western measurement methods with mathematical methods.
In the astronomical calendar, Xu Guangqi introduced European astronomical knowledge represented by ancient Ptolemy's old geocentric theory and contemporary Tycho's new geocentric theory. He was familiar with the Chinese and western calendars at that time and presided over the compilation of the Chongzhen Almanac. In the almanac, he introduced the concept of round earth, and explicitly introduced the concepts of longitude and latitude of the earth. He introduced the concepts of stars into China astronomy, and provided the first all-sky star map according to Tycho's catalogue and China's traditional catalogue, which became the basis of the catalogue in Qing Dynasty. In the calculation method, Xu Guangqi introduced the precise formulas of spherical and plane trigonometry, and made the correction of parallax, air difference and time difference for the first time.
The compilation of Calendar of Chongzhen is a leap-forward breakthrough in China's ancient calendar reform, which laid the foundation for China's nearly 300-year calendar. Xu Guangqi's work of compiling calendars laid a certain ideological, theoretical and technical foundation for the development of astronomy in China from ancient times to modern times.
Xu Guangqi is not only interested in science, but also very concerned about people's sufferings. One year, when his father died, Xu Guangqi went back to Shanghai for a funeral. That summer, there was a flood in the south of the Yangtze River, which flooded rice and watches. After the flood receded, there was no grain harvest in the farmland. Xu Guangqi is worried about this. He thought, what will you do next spring if you don't plant some other crops? Just then, a friend brought a batch of sweet potato seedlings from Fujian. Xu Guangqi tried to plant sweet potatoes on the wasteland, and soon they grew green. Later, he specially compiled a booklet to publicize the method of planting sweet potatoes. The sweet potato, which was originally planted only along the coast of Fujian, was transplanted to Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.
In A.D. 1620, Ming Shenzong died, and so did his son Zhu Changluo Ming Guangzong. Zhu Youxiao, the grandson of Zongshen, acceded to the throne, that is, Ming Xizong. When Xu Guangqi returned to Beijing, he saw that the threat of the late Jin Dynasty was becoming more and more serious, and urged him to build more western guns. For this reason, there was a conflict with the Minister of War, and Xu Guangqi was excluded from the court.
When Xu Guangqi returned to Shanghai, he was already an old man in his sixties. He was initially interested in studying agricultural science. After returning to his hometown, he took part in labor and did some experiments in his own field. Later, he wrote his usual research results into a book called "The Complete Book of Agricultural Administration". This book records China's agricultural techniques such as farm tools, soil, water conservancy, fertilization, seed selection and grafting in detail, which is a great summary of China's ancient agricultural knowledge. He paid special attention to the theory of farmland water conservancy, and the five water use methods put forward by him still have important reference value.
1633, Xu Guangqi, a pioneer of science, died in Beijing at the age of 72.