From Correspondence to Coauthorship: Reconstructing C. N. Yang’s Transpacific Academic Network History
This project reconstructs the long-term academic and social network of physicist C. N. Yang by combining archival materials with public bibliographic data. Rather than treating coauthorship as the only sign of professional connection, the project compares three different forms of ties: formal scholarly collaboration, direct correspondence, and archival co-mentions in photographs and related records. The result is a multiplex view of Yang’s network across time, geography, and relationship type.
The project asks three connected questions. First, how did Yang’s network change over time when measured through coauthorship, correspondence, and photo co-mention? Second, did major milestones in Yang’s life and shifts in China-US relations coincide with structural changes in those networks? Third, did the three layers capture systematically different social worlds, or did they largely refer to the same set of people?
The overall argument emerging from the analysis is that these layers do not tell the same story. Coauthorship captures formal and sustained intellectual collaboration, correspondence reveals a broader communication network, and photo co-mention brings in family, political, institutional, and ceremonial ties that would not appear in a publication-based study alone.