File:LE-SHEN-LAN AND HIS PUPILS.jpg

English: John Thomson: LE-SHEN-LAN is professor of mathematics in the Imperial College, Peking, and is now about sixty years of age. In his youth he studied thoroughly the native mathematics, reading the Jesuit translations, and the works of native authors as well. More than twenty years ago he visited Shanghai, and there made the acquaintance of the English missionaries. He remained for many years, translating works on mathematics and natural philosophy. Had it not been for the valuable aid afforded by Englishmen connected with the various Protestant missions, China could not have boasted such a mathematician as Le-shen-lan. a man who has reaped the advantage of Wylie's translation of Euclid's Elements, or rather his completion of the work which Ricci had begun when he translated the first six books about two centuries before; of the Tae-soo-heo, a treatise on algebra; and of the Tae-we-tseih-shth-keTh, or the Elements of Analytical Geometry, Differential and Integral Calculus, and other similar works. Some five or six years since, Le-shen-lan was recommended to the notice of the Emperor, and appointed to fill the post of professor of mathematics in the Peking College. He has compiled several small works on mathematics, for the most part original investigations, and appears to have a mind thoroughly adapted for mathematical study, being a minute and close reasoner, and accurate and rapid in calculation. He is presented to the reader, surrounded by his pupils, in No. 37.