Hsu, Kwan

Born in Guangxi Province, China, in 1913, Kwan Hsu was raised in Batavia (Java) and Shanghai. Through her father's second wife, she was the niece of Huang Yanpei, founder of Chinese vocational education. Kwan graduated from the Baptist-run University of Shanghai in 1936 (B.Sc. in Physics), but her plans to go abroad for post-graduate education were derailed by the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war. Throughout the decade-long Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Kwan was the main breadwinner for her immediate family, supporting them by teaching physics at the University and also at three and four high schools at a time. After the war, the University of Shanghai and the Baptist Missionary Board, which oversaw its operations, arranged a scholarship for Kwan's post-graduate study in the United States. The American Association of University Women (AAUW) also awarded her a scholarship as part of their program to provide for the further education of women from war-ravaged countries. Kwan was the first Chinese woman to receive such a scholarship.

Enrolled at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1947, Kwan obtained a Masters Degree in Physics in 1950. Though she matriculated into the State University of Iowa, she failed her first Ph.D. qualifying exams there. Having become interested in biophysics, Kwan shifted her focus from purely theoretical physics and began searching for a different school. In 1954, she was accepted at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1960 received her Ph.D. in Biophysics. After graduation, she obtained a position as the assistant chief of biophysics at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Indianapolis, and as an assistant professor of Biophysics at Indiana University.

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