Shen Kuo, a native of Qiantang (present-day Hangzhou) in the Northern Song Dynasty, was a famous reformer and scientist in ancient China. He made great achievements in astronomy and calendar, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, geology, meteorology, biology and medicine. Westerners call him "the coordinate in the history of science in China".
At the age of 33, Shen Kuo went to Kaifeng, the capital, to study astronomical calendars. During Wang Anshi's political reform, he was appointed as the director of the astronomical supervision department responsible for observing astronomical phenomena and making calendars. He replaced the old calendar with his own Fengyuan calendar and put forward the twelve-qi calendar instead of the lunar calendar. The 12-year calendar is more reasonable than the Gregorian calendar widely used in the world now, but unfortunately it has not been adopted.
Shen Kuo has made many achievements in physics. He found a way to use the compass through experiments, so that the pointer always points to the south accurately. This is the earliest record of how to use a compass in the world. After that, when he used the compass to orient, he found that the magnetic needle often deviated to the east, not to the south. He was the first in history to point out that the geomagnetic field has a magnetic declination, 400 years earlier than Europeans. His explanation of concave mirror imaging and pinhole imaging and his experiment of sound vibration are in a leading position in the world.
Shen Kuo has also made many contributions to geosciences. He visited the eastern part of Zhejiang and proposed that the peaks of Yandang Mountain had been washed away by running water for thousands of years. When he passed the foothills of Taihang Mountain and saw an accumulation layer composed of pebble snail shells in the middle of the mountain wall, he concluded that it was an ancient seaside and concluded that "all continents were alluvial by muddy sediments". These unique insights have much in common with modern scientific conclusions.
Shen Kuo lived in Meng Xi Park in Runzhou (now Zhenjiang) in his later years, specializing in writing, leaving a 26-volume scientific masterpiece "Meng Qian Bi Tan" for future generations, which became a database of ancient scientific and technological achievements in China. Important achievements such as movable type printing, four methods of magnetic needle device and water steelmaking have been recorded and handed down by this book.