Daisy Yen Wu

Daisy Yen Wu (吴严彩韵, 12 June 190227 May 1993) was the first Chinese woman engaged as an academic researcher in biochemistry and nutrition.

Born into a wealthy industrial family in Shanghai, from a young age she was tutored in English and encouraged to study.

Yan Caiyun was born on 12 June 1902 in Shanghai, China, to Yang Lifen (杨丽芬) and Yan Zijun (严子均).

Her mother was a Christian and raised the couple's twelve children.

Her father was from the well-to-do (费市严家) and was employed in the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce.

He eventually took over and managed the family businesses.

Yan's paternal grandfather, Yan Xinhou (严信厚) served as an advisor to Li Hongzhang, an official of the Qing dynasty, and was an industrialist.

He founded China's salt industry, as well as banks, factories, pharmacies, and tea shops around the country.

Both her grandfather and father were also talented painters and calligraphers.

Convinced of the importance of education, Yan Zijun hired university teachers to tutor the children from a young age in English and Chinese before they attended primary school in Shanghai.

In 1908, Yan entered McTyeire School, a private girls' school.

In 1913, the family moved to Tianjin, where Yan and two of her sisters, Yan Lianyun and Youyun prepared for the entrance exams of the Chinese and Western Girls' High School.

She passed the examination and enrolled in the middle of 1914, completing her studies there in June 1917.

She graduated from Nanjing Jinling Women's University in 1921 and then studied in the United States, graduating with a master's degree in biochemistry from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1923.

She was admitted to Nanjing Jinling Women's University (later renamed Ginling College), earning a bachelor's degree with honours in 1921.

As Yan was keen to continue her education, her father allowed her to go abroad to study in the United States.

She enrolled in chemistry studies at Smith College in 1922, and began using the English name "Daisy Yen".

Over the summer break, she took courses at the University of Chicago in chemistry, nutrition, and physics and the next fall enrolled in biochemistry courses at Teachers College, Columbia University.

She studied nutrition, a field which at the time was in its infancy, under Henry Clapp Sherman and Mary Swartz Rose, taking particular interest in the analysis of vitamin content in food.

Returning to China, she became an assistant professor at Peking Union Medical College between 1923 and her marriage at the end of 1924 to Hsien Wu.

Collaborating with him, she conducted research on proteins and studied nutrition.

She received her master's degree in May 1923.

Yen was hired by the China Medical Board of the Rockefeller Foundation as an assistant professor in biochemistry at Peking Union Medical College and contracted for a year from September 1923.

The biochemistry department had just been founded and Yen was its second employee.

She lectured and worked as an assistant to Hsien Wu, whose research initially focused on blood chemistry.

She assisted in his research on protein denaturation and published several papers with him: 关于稀酸、稀碱对蛋白质作用的一些新观察 (Some New Observations on the Effects of Dilute Acids and Bases on Proteins, 1924), 蛋白质变性的研究，I．稀酸和稀碱对蛋白质的影响 (Research on Protein Denaturation, I: The Effect of Dilute Acid and Alkali on Protein, 1924), 蛋白质的热变性 (Thermal Denaturation of Protein, 1925), and 乳胶体对有色溶液的作用 (The Effect of Latex on Colored Solution, 1926).

The couple married on 20 December 1924 in Shanghai and Yen Wu resigned.

They honeymooned in the United States and Yen Wu made plans to resume her studies and complete her doctoral work under Sherman at Columbia.

After their marriage she continued to assist in the research conducted by Wu as an unpaid staff member until 1928.

These studies would later become the basis for Hsien Wu's theory on protein denaturation first presented in 1931.

Despite her contract being renewed for another year, when Yen and Wu decided to marry, she knew her position would be terminated, as there was a policy that spouses could not work together.

While raising their children, Yen Wu recognized that educational opportunities were limited and founded the Mingming School (明明学校) in 1934 to provide a modern comprehensive education for Chinese children.

She also raised funds in 1936 to build a school hospital for their alma mater, the Jinling Women's College, and earned a degree in French.

In 1949, as her husband was in the United States and unable to return because of the Chinese Communist Revolution, she took the children abroad.

Hired as a researcher for the Medical College of Alabama, she resumed collaboration with her husband, until his death in 1959.

Moving to New York City in 1960, she conducted research for the United Nations Children's Fund to develop nutritional standards from 1960 to 1964.

From 1964 to 1971 she worked as a lecturer and created a reference library for the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and from 1971 to 1987 she worked at St. Luke's Hospital Center, creating a library for the New York Obesity Research Center.

Throughout her life, Yen Wu created numerous scholarships in China, Taiwan, and the United States which bear the name of family members and allow students to further their education.

She and her husband collaborated in writing the first Chinese textbook on nutrition, which remained in print through the 1990s.

She died in 1993 in Ithaca, New York.