Zhèng Fùguāng 鄭復光
Style name Huànxiāng 浣香 or Yuánfǔ 元甫. Native of Shèxiàn 歙縣 (Huīzhōu, An-huī). Born Qiánlóng 45 (1780); died Xiánfēng 3 (1853). CBDB c_personid 83821 records the birth year 1780; the death year 1853 is the conventional figure from the standard biographies. The graphic variant in the catalog (鄭複光) is a common variant of 鄭復光 — the same person.
A polymathic Huīzhōu scholar — mathematician, optician, and natural philosopher — whose work spans the boundary between traditional Chinese mathematical scholarship and the emergent late-Qīng interest in European gézhì 格致 (natural philosophy / “investigation of things”). His principal contributions are in two areas:
(1) Mathematics — including the Bǐsuàn shuōlüè 筆算說略 (KR3fc074) in 2 juàn, a primer on the European brush-and-pen (Western) arithmetic-notation method as opposed to the indigenous counting-board (chóusuàn 籌算) and abacus (zhūsuàn 珠算) traditions. This is one of the foundational documents of nineteenth-century Chinese arithmetic pedagogy.
(2) Optics and instrumentation — including the Jìngjìng língchī 鏡鏡詅癡, a major treatise on the theory and construction of optical instruments (mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes), drawing on the Jesuit-era optical literature and his own experimental practice. Zhèng Fùguāng built telescopes and other optical instruments himself, and Jìngjìng língchī is the principal Chinese optical-technical work of its generation.
He was closely connected to the Huīzhōu evidential-scholarly milieu (the lineage of 戴震 Dài Zhèn) and to the Chángzhōu mathematical school via 李兆洛 Lǐ Zhàoluò. His work is widely cited in the late-Qīng gézhì literature and contributed to the late-Qīng technological-scientific revival programmes.