Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month Reading Recommendations
AAPI Heritage Month Book Recommendations
Abigail Malate
For this Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month , AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives librarians and archivists are pleased to share these book recommendations from our collections. We have something for everyone! The first few books on this list are by and about South Asian physicists, who are often overlooked during celebrations of AAPI month. A star catalog from Hawai’i is then followed by books that provide different perspectives on the effects of politics and protest in Asian American communities. There are great books for a younger audience on the amazing Chien Shiung Wu; then, if you want to get into the technical side of physics, scroll further down the list for books intended both for a lay audience and for scientists. Finally, if you would not feel the worse for a book in verse, find a poetic memoir by Leong Ying at the end. Enjoy!
Focus on South Asian physicists
The Man Who Bent Light
The Man Who Bent Light: A Memoir by Narinder Singh Kapany (2021)
One of our most recent acquisitions, The Man Who Bent Light is a captivating memoir of Narinder Singh Kapany, often called the “Father of Fiber Optics” and who Fortune called “one of the seven ‘unsung heroes’ of the twentieth century whose contributions radically changed the global business landscape.” A fellow of the Optical Society of America (now Optica , an AIP Member Society), he was known for his work to demonstrate the transmission of images through optical fiber bundles and his work to promote the applications of fiber optic technology to academic, corporate, and government leaders. This book provides a series of short vignettes, often with photographs, that together tell the more personal story of Kapany. It includes everything from a childhood prank with his troublemaking cousin involving tricking their uncle into eating a laxative and locking the family’s pet monkey in a room with him, to his lifelong advocacy for the American Sikh community and preservation of Sikh art and culture. It is an easy and enjoyable read that we are glad to have join the stacks at NBLA.
-Recommended by Archivist Benjamin Henry
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
S. Chandrasekhar: Selected Correspondence and Conversations
S. Chandrasekhar: Selected Correspondence and Conversations by Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, edited by Kameshwar C. Wali (2020)
This book of letters offers a rare glimpse at the inner workings of Nobel Laureate Subramanyan Chandrasekhar (“Chandra”), a highly regarded figure in the world of physics. With firsthand correspondence that records his thoughts and feelings from his student years in India and England to conversations with his wife of almost sixty years, Lalitha, it is an intimate journey into Chandra’s mind as a human being as well as a scientist.
While there are several biographies available about Chandra , and AIP has oral history interviews with him (1977 and 1987 ), he was known to be a highly reserved and private person. We can see an example of this aspect of Chandra’s personality in a letter from 1937 recorded in this book to Indian physicist K.S. Krishnan:
I want however to request you one thing. When conversing with any scientist, Shoenberg, Rosenfeld, for instance or any who happens to know me, I would especially request you not to talk to them (or even mention) anything about me which could now be remotely described as “private.” Many of my friends in Cambridge...do not even know my relation with Sir C.V.R. [Nobel Laureate C.V. Raman, Chandra’s uncle and teacher/colleague of Krishnan] and they are better to be ignorant of that—this is only for an example. Perhaps this sounds pedantic, but you can take it as one of my idiosyncrasies!
-Recommended by Archivist Benjamin Henry
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Her Space, Her Time
Her Space, Her Time
Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe by Shohini Ghose (2023)
Shohini Ghose is a physicist and historian of science who grew up in India. She came to the United States for her higher education in physics and earned a PhD at the University of New Mexico in 2003. Now residing in Canada, she has many accolades and positions within the physics community there, not the least of which is Professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfried Laurier University in Ontario and former President of the Canadian Association of Physicists.
In Her Space, Her Time, Ghose takes a personal and unique approach to exploring contributions by women to science throughout history. She tells stories on topics that are important to her path in physics, such as lectures she gave, her opportunity to witness the launch of the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN robotic explorer) in 2013 and even her own romance and wedding with a fellow physicist. These life experiences in physics set the backdrop and lead the reader eagerly into the stories of women in the history of science relating to that topic: Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Leavitt, Dilhan Eyrut, Harriet Brooks, Lise Meitner, Hertha Wambacher, Vera Rubin, and more – too many to list here. Notably, she writes about the life and contributions of Indian particle physicist Bibha Chowdhuri (1913-1991), who made important discoveries in the field of cosmic ray studies, including being one of the first scientists to identify and directly detect mesons.
Ghose writes in the introduction to the book:
Like other women scientists who came before me, I have some experience with being invisible. When I think back to my time as a young woman pursuing my bachelor’s degree at an American university, the words I remember most clearly are ‘Good morning, gentlemen!’ That’s how one of my professors regularly greeted my class, oblivious to the lone woman in the room.
We were lucky enough to get an interview with the author on her motivations for writing the book, which will be published on this blog in a few days. Stay tuned!
-Recommended by Librarian Corinne Mona
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Among the stars
Nā inoa hōkū
Nā inoa hōkū : Hawaiian and Pacific star names, revised edition by Rubellite Kawena Johnson, John Kaipo Mahelona, and Clive Ruggles (2015)
Originally published in 1975, this revised and expanded edition of Nā inoa hōkū is at its core a reference book, but it is such a fascinating one that it could be read cover to cover. The authors of the original edition, Pacific and Hawaiian language experts Rubellite Kawena Johnson (Professor Emerita of Hawaiian Language and Literature at the University of Hawai’i) and John Kaipo Mahelona (one of Professor Johnson’s former students), joined with archaeoastronomy expert Clive Ruggles to extend the catalog and add more background information, with a strong focus on the rich historical legacy of the Hawaiian Islands.
The authors provide sources and context for the star names to create a strong addition to the corpus of information on the cultural development of the Hawaiian Islands and the skill of its people as long distance oceanic navigators. They give over a hundred pages on Hawaiian archival sources for star names, as well as Hawaiian and English translations of many texts, followed by a catalog of Hawaiian star names, commentaries and background information, and a comparative catalog of Polynesian star names.
To give a small taste of the book, here are the categories of star names they give in the introduction:
- Names of deities and sacred objects
- Names of heroes of the migration
- Names of ancient homelands
- Names of cataclysmic events with the motivation for migration
- Names of local chiefs not connected with the migration
- Borrowed names
- Names of stars used in navigation
- Names of planets
- Names of constellations
-Recommended by Librarian Corinne Mona
Worldcat | Na Mea Hawai’i Shop | NBLA
Political strife and protest
The Most Wanted Man in China
The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey from Scientist to Enemy of the State by Fang Lizhi (2013)
This autobiography documents the life and career of Chinese astrophysicist, Fang Lizhi, who sought asylum at the U.S. embassy following the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Translated by Perry Link, who encouraged Fang to seek asylum, The Most Wanted Man in China (2016) is the English version of Fang’s Chinese autobiography titled, The Autobiography of Fang Lizhi, which was published shortly after his death in 2012.
Fang was born in 1936 in Beijing, China, under Japanese occupation and shortly before the Second Sino-Japanese War. He attended Beijing University, one of China’s top universities, and studied physics. It was at Beijing University where he would meet his future wife and fellow physicist, Li Shuxian. While in university, Fang was a part of the Communist Party and would later be recruited to work on Mao Zedong’s project to build an atomic bomb. When the Party purged those who they believed held counterrevolutionary beliefs, Fang and two fellow scientists were expelled for penning a letter criticizing the Anti-Rightist movement. This was the first expulsion from the Party that Fang experienced, as he oscillated between being aligned with and against the Party over his long physics career.
The Most Wanted Man in China follows Fang’s early life in Beijing, his career as a scientist working for the Party, and his political dissent and move to the U.S. He recalls his quiet childhood in Beijing, despite Japanese occupation and a series of wars, and weaves regional and political history with personal anecdotes. He recounts his college education at Beijing University and his commitment to communism as a young physicist. The memoir tracks his personal and political disillusionment of the Party over decades, as his scientific career and politics became increasingly at odds.
For more on this book, see the Physics Today review “The Most Wanted Man in China: My Journey from Scientist to Enemy of the State ” by Remo Ruffini.
-Recommended by Archives Fellow Dorothy Tang
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Thread of the Silkworm
Thread of the Silkworm by Iris Chang (1995)
What would it be like to make major contributions to a field of science, helping to pioneer the American space age for example, only to be accused of being an enemy of the state based on no evidence, then spend five years under house arrest? And then be deported...but then you reproduce the science you did in America to bring China to the space age? This is the biography of Tsien Hsue-shen (1911-2009), who played a major part in bringing the Chinese missile and space programs into existence, and who never set foot back in the U.S. after his deportation at the height of McCarthyism in 1955. However, Tsien Hsue-shen is not always painted as a sympathetic hero in the book, and there is discussion of his approval of Maoist policies and the Tiananmen Square massacre. In the conclusion:
The greatest tragedy of the Tsien story is not his deportation from the United States and the subsequent loss and increased threat to U.S. defense, or even the years of quiet suffering he had to endure at the hands of the INS [the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service] and in China during its various political upheavals. Rather, the real tragedy is the extent to which Tsien himself has apparently betrayed his own principles and bought into the system once he returned to China. There Tsien may have gradually become his own worst enemy -- the very kind of rigid, unquestioning bureaucrat that he had once so despised within the INS and the U.S. government during the McCarthy era.
The book contains a long paragraph of thanks to librarians and archivists at many institutions, as well as over fifty pages of notes and sources at its conclusion.
-Recommended by Librarian Corinne Mona
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Don’t Ever Whisper
Don’t Ever Whisper: Darlene Keju, Pacific Health Pioneer, Champion for Nuclear Survivors by Giff Johnson (2013)
Don’t Ever Whisper tells the story of Darlene Keju (1951-1996). She was born on Ebeye Island in the Marshall Islands, which was downwind from Bikini and Enewetak atolls where nuclear weapons were tested 67 times by the United States. This biography was written by her husband, Giff Johnson, and tells the story of her activism in bringing the world’s attention to the consequences of nuclear testing.
From the publisher:
Don’t Ever Whisper tells the powerful story of a woman from a tiny Pacific island who championed the cause of nuclear weapons test survivors when others were silent, and who later implemented unparalleled community health programs and services that gave hope to a generation of troubled youth. Don’t Ever Whisper is the stirring account of Marshall Islander Darlene Keju’s struggle to gain an American education despite disadvantages of language and resources, and to use that education first to expose to the world a United States government cover up of its nuclear weapons testing program in her islands, and later to inspire young Marshall Islanders to make changes in their personal behavior to transform the health of their communities. Darlene remained ignorant for decades about the cancer-causing radioactive fallout that rained down on her and thousands of unsuspecting islanders. But she used her American education to pierce the veil of secrecy shrouding the U.S. government’s hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the 1950s.
Darlene took to a global stage at the World Council of Churches Assembly in Canada to tell the world about the health impact of these nuclear tests, and of the U.S. Army’s discrimination against Marshall Islanders at its missile-testing base at Kwajalein Atoll. A U.S. Ambassador accused her of creating “nauseating propaganda.” But secret U.S. nuclear test-era documents that have come to light in recent years — and are detailed in this biography — document the U.S. government’s deliberate concealment of the true story behind the conduct of its nuclear weapons tests. Don’t Ever Whisper also tells the inspiring story of Darlene’s further transformation to educational innovator, whose community health programs had far-reaching effects in her Pacific nation. Through Youth to Youth in Health, a non-government organization Darlene pioneered, she went to bat for marginalized young people, a largely ignored population with little hope, low self-esteem, and a penchant for expressing their frustrations by suicide and other anti-social behavior. As told in Don’t Ever Whisper, Darlene empowered women, young people, and their communities to take control of their own health and economic well being through work that was praised as a model for the Pacific by the U.S. Public Health Service, the United Nations Population Fund, and other international organizations.
-Recommended by Associate Director Allison Rein
WorldCat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Chien Shiung Wu for the younger set (but really for everyone)
Chien-Shiung Wu: Nuclear Physicist
Chien-shiung Wu: nuclear physicist by Nel Yomtov, with content consultation by Suzanne Keilson (2018)
Chien-shiung Wu: Nuclear Physicist is a slim volume written by Nel Yomtov, a children’s book writer and illustrator, in consultation with physicist Dr. Suzanne Keilson. As a book geared towards middle grade or young adult readers, the language is accessible and interspersed with full-page pictures, quotes, and additional information. However, it doesn’t shy away from discussing the sexism and racism Wu faced throughout her career and situating Wu’s work within the larger sociopolitical atmosphere of the 20th century. It also introduces readers to physics concepts, like the difference between nuclear fission and fusion, and the applications of beta decay in medicine.
The book includes helpful educational tools, like a timeline, fact sheet, and glossary. Chien-shiung Wu is part of a larger “Women in Science” series from ABDO Publishing, which “provides junior high and high school readers with biographical information on some of the greatest women in science, as well their discoveries and contributions to their respective fields of science and the world.”
-Recommended by Archivist Elizabeth Wood
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Queen of Physics
Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom by Teresa Robeson, illustrated by Rebecca Huang (2019)
This beautifully illustrated picture book focuses on Wu’s early life in a way that formal biographies may not, giving readers context for how few girls were educated in China at the time. The book describes how her parents quit their jobs and set up a school for girls in her hometown, going from door to door to recruit their neighborhood children to attend. Moving from childhood to adulthood, the reader experiences Wu’s bravery and perseverance throughout her life, and the book gives small but touching details that are perhaps not widely known, such as her regret that she never got to go back to China to visit her parents before they died. Her scientific accomplishments are well explained, considering the brevity of the picture-book format.
-Recommended by Librarian Corinne Mona
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
On the technical side
Physics of the Impossible
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku (2008)
Physics of the Impossible is written by Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York. Kaku is Japanese American, born in California in 1947; both his parents were incarcerated at the Tule Lake War Relocation Center during WWII. Though he has published research in academic journals, Kaku is most famous as a science communicator and popular science writer. This book from 2008 uses various technologies from science fiction to demonstrate the fundamentals of physics.
From the publisher:
A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace in the future.
From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the world of science fiction to explore the fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we know them today. He ranks the impossible technologies by categories—Class I, II, and III, depending on when they might be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never. In a compelling and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:· How the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light around an object, like a stream flowing around a boulder, making the object invisible to observers “downstream”· How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to the nearby stars· How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology· Why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics, although it would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one.
Kaku uses his discussion of each technology as a jumping-off point to explain the science behind it. An extraordinary scientific adventure, Physics of the Impossible takes readers on an unforgettable, mesmerizing journey into the world of science that both enlightens and entertains.
-Recommended by Associate Director Allison Rein
WorldCat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Elementary Particles
Elementary particles: a short history of some discoveries in atomic physics by Yang Chen Ning (1961)
Chen Ning Yang (1922-2025) was a Chinese American* theoretical physicist known for the development of developing non-abelian gauge theory, with Robert Mills. Yang also won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics with Tsung-Dao Lee for their work on parity non-conservation of the weak interaction. Yang worked at Princeton from 1949 until 1965, when he moved to Stony Brook University to become the first director of the newly founded Institute for Theoretical Physics. Today this institute is known as the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics.
While at Princeton, Yang was invited to speak in the Louis Clark Vanuxem Lecture Series. His lectures were given in November 1959 and became the basis for this book. Elementary particles; a short history of some discoveries in atomic physics is written for a university-educated audience with some interest in science. However, as Yang notes in his preface, he tested the manuscript on his wife, a teacher, to ensure accessibility and clarity for non-physicists.
*Note: Yang was born in China and obtained US citizenship in the 1960s after a couple of decades of living and working here. He moved back to China around 2004 to take a position at Tsinghua University; he lived in China for the rest of his life and formally renounced his US citizenship in 2015.
-Recommended by Archivist Elizabeth Wood
Worldcat | Bookshop | NBLA | Goodreads
Poetry
From Newton, Einstein, to God
From Newton, Einstein, to God: A Poetic Memoir by Leong Ying (2015)
This book traces the fascinating life of Dr. Leong Ying from his birth into poverty in the then-British colony of Singapore as “a child with prophetic abilities and a penchant for daydreaming,” to his rejection of spirituality in favor of a scientific education in England where he received a degree in nuclear physics, and finally to his immigration to America. While in America he started to reconcile science and spirituality in his own way to reveal the “ultimate godly secrets” and what he refers to as the Twin Universe.
Interspersed with photos from throughout his life, the title of this book is serious when it says it is a “poetic” memoir. The entire book is written in poetic, usually rhyming, verse, transforming the most mundane biographical details of Ying’s life into lyrical journeys. For example, while Ying could have simply written about a place he worked and devices he invented, he instead writes:
At EDAX I was the senior mechanical engineer.
No fancy title but still respected by my peers.
Developed their first cryogen-free X-ray detectors.
By integrating the silicon sensors with Kleemenko cryocoolers.
Company filed a joint patent for another of my novel inventions.
Using thermoelectric coolers and heat pipes for effective conduction.
The book dances between biographical narrative like this to deeper philosophical ruminations, as we see in Part V of the memoir titled Rise of the Dragon (2007-2012):
In science we seek true facts, cold and calculating.
In life we seek true love, warm and endearing.
But they are merely two sides of the fabric of existence.
Unbalanced souls look upon only one surface for veneration.
Love on its own cannot provide for physical exploration.
And neither can facts alone satisfy our spiritual sustenance.
-Recommended by Archivist Benjamin Henry
