18 Facts About Taylor Wang

Taylor Gun-Jin Wang is a Chinese-born Taiwanese-American scientist and in 1985, became the first person of Chinese origin to go into space.

Taylor Wang moved to Taiwan in 1952 with his family.

Taylor Wang studied his later part of elementary school in Kaohsiung, and graduated from the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan.

Taylor Wang started studying physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1963.

Taylor Wang received his Bachelor of Science in 1967, his Master of Science in 1968, and his Ph.

Taylor Wang gained US citizenship in 1975, and published a paper on the dynamic behavior of rotating spheroids in zero gravity the next year.

The paper received attention in NASA, and Taylor Wang was selected as a payload specialist on June 1,1983, for the Spacelab-3 mission.

Taylor Wang conducted precursor drop dynamics experiments for the DDM in ground-based laboratories employing acoustic levitation systems, neutral buoyancy systems and drop towers, and in the near-weightless environment provided by JSC's KC-135 airplane flights and SPAR rockets.

Taylor Wang is the inventor of the acoustic levitation and manipulation chamber for the DDM.

Taylor Wang was the principal designer of an experiment called the Drop Dynamics Module, which aimed to uncover the fundamental physical behavior of liquid drops in microgravity.

Taylor Wang, feeling immense pressure and aware of the high expectations from the Chinese community, became deeply despondent.

At mission conclusion, Taylor Wang traveled over 2.9 million miles in 110 Earth orbits, and logged over 168 hours in space.

Taylor Wang later became a Centennial Professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Taylor Wang has written about 200 journal articles and holds 28 US patents on acoustics, drops and bubble dynamics, collision and coalescence of drops, charged drop dynamics, containerless science, and encapsulation of living cells.

Taylor Wang's experiments were carried out in 1985 aboard United States Spacelab 3, and in 1992 aboard United States Microgravity Laboratory 1, and in 1995 aboard USML-2.

Taylor Wang has received various honors and awards, including Space Flight Medal NASA 1985, Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal NASA 1987, Asian Pacific American Achievement Award 1989.

Taylor Wang was awarded Asian American Engineer of the Year Distinguished Science and Technology Award, CIE-USA, National Engineers Foundation 2007.

Taylor Wang addressed the United Nations' General Assembly in 1990 as part of the "Only One Earth Day".