Kerson Huang

Kerson Huang (Chinese: 黃克孫; pinyin: Huáng Kèsūn; 15 March 1928 – 1 September 2016) was a Chinese-born American theoretical physicist and translator.

Huang was born in Nanning, China and grew up in Manila, Philippines. He earned a B.S. and a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1950 and 1953, respectively. He served as an instructor at MIT from 1953 to 1955, and subsequently spent two years as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. After returning to the MIT faculty in 1957, Huang became an authority on statistical physics, and worked on Bose–Einstein condensation and quantum field theory. At MIT, he had many PhD students in theoretical physics including Raymond G. Vickson^[1] who became a professor in Operations Research at the University of Waterloo. After retiring in 1999, he wrote on biophysics and was also a visiting professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.^[2]

Huang was best known to Chinese readers as the translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; while a graduate student in physics, he adapted Edward FitzGerald's famous adaptation into Classical Chinese verse. The book (Chinese: 魯拜集) had been out of print for years, but was reprinted in Taiwan in 1989. With his wife Rosemary, Huang also translated the ancient divination text I Ching into English.^[3]

Huang died on 1 September 2016 at the age of 88.^[4]