Zhang Heng
Chinese scientist and statesman (78-139) · China · Scientists · Died at 61
Zhang Heng is read about 193 times a day, in 61 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 83 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A Han dynasty court astronomer who built the first seismoscope - a bronze vessel that could point toward an earthquake five hundred kilometers away before any messenger arrived.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 12
A pottery miniature of a palace made during the Han dynasty; as a palace attendant, Zhang Heng had personal access to Emperor Shun and the right to escort him
Eastern Han tomb brick depicting the courtyard of a wealthy family's home. Zhang enjoyed a short period of retirement at his home in Xi'e, Nanyang, before being called back to the capital, where he died in 139.![An Eastern Han earthenware figurine of the Queen Mother of the West. Zhang fantasized about her in his "Rhapsody on Contemplating the Mystery" (思玄賦), yet the pleasures of the flesh and immortality that she could offer were not tempting enough to sway his heart which was set elsewhere.[32]](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/QueenMotherOfTheWest-Earthenware-EasternHanDynasty-ROM-May8-08.png/1280px-QueenMotherOfTheWest-Earthenware-EasternHanDynasty-ROM-May8-08.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=parser&utm_content=thumbnail)
An Eastern Han earthenware figurine of the Queen Mother of the West. Zhang fantasized about her in his "Rhapsody on Contemplating the Mystery" (思玄賦), yet the pleasures of the flesh and immortality that she could offer were not tempting enough to sway his heart which was set elsewhere.[32]
About this person
Zhang Heng studied in Luoyang and Chang'an, then worked his way from minor civil servant in Nanyang to Chief Astronomer at the imperial court. His refusal to bend on calendrical disputes kept him from becoming Grand Historian, and a feud with palace eunuchs under Emperor Shun drove him out to administer Hejian Kingdom in present-day Hebei. He invented a water-powered armillary sphere to track the stars, refined the inflow water clock, and cataloged twenty-five hundred stars while theorizing that the Moon was a sphere lit by reflected sunlight. His poetry circulated widely; his mechanical ingenuity ran to gears and hydraulics. Recalled to the capital in 138, he died there the following year.
Scientists from China 6
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