Zhu Kezhen (1890–1974), also known as Chu Coching, was a Harvard-educated meteorologist who worked in the field of climate sciences in China from 1918 to 1974. He was highly regarded under vastly different political regimes. His concerns regarding the development of observatory networks, educational practices, and the establishment of research topics reflect the development of the field in China, which only began at the very end of the 19th century.
Zhu Kezhen was influenced by the meteorological and climate knowledge imparted to him by his academic teachers in the United States and appropriated Ellsworth Huntington’s ideas on climate determinism, which shaped some of his fundamental concerns. One of his main achievements was to make use of a wide array of observational and other data in order to contribute to the “localization” of climate science. In fact, employing data culled from traditional sources and making use of and expanding the phenological knowledge of traditional Chinese rural society allowed him to approach climate science in a way that was not easily possible in the West. Zhu’s research into historical climate change in China embodied many aspects of his approach to the localization of science in China, but changes in the international scientific network (from an American-European to a Soviet-dominated network) and the political turmoil in the People’s Republic of China greatly impaired his work. Zhu’s research remains highly influential and has exerted considerable influence on environmental and climate history.
