Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biographer-recaps-u-k-scientists-fascination-with-china Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Prolific author Simon Winchester discusses his latest book, "The Man Who Loved China," which chronicles the adventures of scientist Joseph Needham in the Asian nation. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. RAY SUAREZ: What makes China China? That was the focus, the obsession of one Joseph Needham.He was a Cambridge University biochemist whose life took a dramatic turn in 1937. That's when he fell in love with a visiting Chinese student. It was an affair tolerated by his wife and sparked a lifelong fascination with China.In particular, he wanted to know why China, where so many advances in science and technology had originated, had been eclipsed by the West. He began his extensive travels in war-torn China in 1943. And by the time of his death in 1995, he was recognized as one of the world's pre-eminent China scholars. His legacy was the monumental, 24-volume "Science and Civilization in China."Joseph Needham is the subject of a new book by Simon Winchester, "The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of an Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom."And, Simon Winchester, maybe this is a perfect time to be having this conversation, because, once again, we're trying to open China and understand it, aren't we?SIMON WINCHESTER, Author, "The Man Who Loved China": I think it is appropriate that we start focusing on what it is, as you said in your introduction, that makes China China.And this majestic, monumental series of books really does, in its essence, bring out that. It's an extraordinary work. And I'm thrilled that I found this man, this man who's very little known in the West, but every Chinese person whose Chinese name is Li Yuese — and if you say "Li Yuese" to any Chinese schoolchild, he'd say, "That's the greatest Englishman ever to have lived in China."