Tso-hsin Cheng

Tso-hsin Cheng (郑作新 also transcribed as Zheng Zuoxin) (18 November 1906 – 27 June 1998) was a Chinese ornithologist known for his seminal work on the birds of China and mentoring a generation of researchers.

Educated in the United States, he chose to stay in China after the Second World War while many of his academic colleagues moved to Taiwan.

He went to the high school at Fuzhou and sought admission to the Fujian Christian University at the age of 15 which required him to undergo a special test.

[1] An uncle who was a doctor in Fuzhou funded Cheng's travel and he chose the University of Michigan as a cousin studied there.

He studied under Peter Olas Okkelberg and received a doctorate in 1930 for his thesis on "The Germ Cell history of Rana cantabrigensis Baird".

He moved to the US in April 1945 to work on Chinese ornithology, examining specimens in museums and universities across America.

In 1950 he moved to Beijing and became a curator of birds at the Academia Sinica and founded the Peking Natural History Museum in 1951.

From 1955 to 1957 he worked along with Soviet and East German ornithologists in expeditions and studies in southern Yunnan and northeastern China.

He was however not allowed to attend evening parties at Stresemann's home in West Berlin due to instructions from the Chinese embassy in East Germany.

He was told that "birds are public animals of capitalism", had to wear a badge that read "reactionary", was made to undergo an examination of his supposed ornithological training, and was forced to sweep corridors and clean toilets.

In August 1966 he was kept in isolation in a cowshed for six months and his house was searched by Red Guards who confiscated all his belongings including a typewriter that he valued the most.

Pamela Rasmussen named the Sichuan bush warbler (Locustella chengi) discovered in 2015 after Professor Cheng.