Yu Hsiu Ku

Yu Hsiu Ku or Gu Yuxiu, courtesy name Yi Qiao (Chinese: 顾毓琇，字一樵 December 24, 1902 – September 9, 2002) was a Chinese-American electrical engineer, musician, novelist, poet, and politician. A polymathic academic, he was one of the first Chinese people to earn a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1928, and became a leader in higher education in China until the fall of the Republic of China in 1949. Afterwards, he worked for many years as a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ku made contributions to Chinese literature, poetry, and music; to electrical engineering and applied mathematics; and to the history of Zen Buddhism. He became the president of two major Chinese universities, National Central University from 1944 to 1945 and National Chengchi University from 1947 to 1949. He also helped found the predecessor institutions of the Chinese Central Conservatory of Music and Shanghai Theatre Academy.

Politically, Ku served as deputy minister of education of China from 1938 to 1944. In 1968, as a member of the National Assembly of Taiwan, he became the first Taiwanese government official to visit the Soviet Union. He had close personal ties to several leaders of both mainland China and Taiwan, and assisted in negotiations between Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and Taiwanese leader Chen Shui-bian following the Hainan Island incident in 2001.

Ku became a fellow of the two predecessor societies to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which later awarded him its Lamme Medal and Third Millennium Medal.