Japanese Bombing Destroys N University

The Japanese bombing of N University in October 1943 turned the university grounds into a site of destruction and consumed a distinctive record of its mathematical history: the 1:250 model of Newton’s Mathematical Bridge. The fire erased an object connected to Rong Youying’s design and to the university’s rise to prominence, though its designer had died decades earlier.

Background and the Bridge Design

After the Xinhai Revolution, Rong Youying broke her longstanding engagement and returned to her alma mater to become Head of the Department of Mathematics. By then, Lillie’s Academy of Mathematics had changed its name to N University. Her design for the Mathematical Bridge, which used 388 nails, became part of the institution’s public history.

In the summer of 1913, Professor Sir Joseph Larmor, President of the Newtonian Mathematical Society, visited China and brought a 1:250 model of the bridge to N University. The bridge was constructed in the university grounds, and Larmor’s gift helped make the university more famous. The model thus joined a local structure to an international mathematical reputation: it represented both Rong Youying’s ingenuity and the institution that had given her a position of leadership.

The Bombing and Destruction

In October 1943, Japanese bombing burned N University to the ground. The fire destroyed Larmor’s model along with the university’s buildings. The account identifies the model specifically, giving the destruction a material focus: a carefully made representation of a bridge was lost in the burning of the institution where the bridge had been built.

The destruction was not simply the loss of a prominent university object. The model carried a trace of an earlier moment of recognition, when Larmor’s visit and the bridge design had drawn attention to N University. Its destruction severed that physical link to the institution’s former grounds, while the narrative preserves the details that the fire could not: the model’s scale, its maker’s design, and its history at the university.

The Designer’s Absence and the Event’s Aftermath

Rong Youying did not witness the destruction. She had died in childbirth the year after Larmor’s 1913 visit, before reaching forty; by the time of the bombing, she had been dead for twenty-nine years. The account places her absence beside the model’s destruction, emphasizing the distance between the creation and the loss of her work.

The episode closes a chain of linked histories: Rong Youying designed the bridge, Larmor brought its model to N University, and the bombing destroyed that model along with the university. The fire could eliminate the physical artifact, but the surviving account restores its particulars and reconnects it to the woman whose design had helped carry the university’s reputation beyond its grounds.