Stranded Scholar from China: The Life of Calvin H. Chen, MD‪.‬

This essay was revised from a paper originally presented at the National Social Science Association Professional Development Conference on November 15, 2002, in New Orleans. Chinese immigration into the United States has been described usually in terms of the California Gold Rush, as "paper sons" during the period of exclusion from 1882 to 1943, and as part of the wave of immigrants that followed the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. However, there is a small but important segment of about five thousand Chinese immigrants that arrived in the US between 1945 and 1949. They are called the stranded scholars and they form an important Chinese immigrant group because of their intellectual attainments. For instance, two members of this group went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. Another went on to start an important computer firm. (1)