Joseph Needham

Joseph Needham was a British biochemist, historian of science and sinologist who began the multivolume Science and Civilisation in China. He studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and first worked on embryology, publishing Chemical Embryology in 1931. Taught Chinese by Lu Gwei-djen, he directed the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office in Chongqing from 1942 to 1946. In 1948 he proposed to Cambridge University Press a book on science in China that grew into a long series of volumes, fifteen of them written by himself. He drew attention to what became known as the Needham Question, of why China ceded its leadership in science and technology to Western countries.