HE HAD A sense of drama, it followed him. As a boy of 15 he had left China with his uncle after the Japanese invasion. They arrived in Paris and from there moved on to London.
Years later, in his 70s, he decided he had to see the Northern Lights. He set off with a sense of purpose comparable to that of the great German writer WG Sebald.
Tao Kiang, the son of an artist, was an original. He enjoyed a quest, he lived life as one. For all who knew him Tao Kiang combined the tenacious patience of the scholar, with the exasperation of an artist at war with the world.
No, he never suffered fools; he disliked sloppiness and inefficiency, but understood the curiosity which leads the seeker to art, to music, to science, to history. For him life was contained in those lines from William Blake: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/ And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/ Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an hour.”
But for me, he was my best friend’s father, the first astronomer I had ever met and the first person from China. He belonged to rich culture traceable back through the centuries. He knew all about that 11th century text, The Book of Dreams. Yet he also spoke French, German and a bit of Irish, played Schubert on the piano by the stairs, oblivious to the vacuum cleaning and approved heartily when his daughter Sophie my pal and me, both teenage girls, selected David Attenborough as our hero.
As five-times champion Bjorn Borg battled against John McEnroe in that famous 1981 Wimbledon final, with Sophie backing Borg and me supporting the loudmouth American, Tao watched and looked beyond the tennis, for him it was a Shakespearean drama. McEnroe won, but instead of feeling triumphant, I was guilty. Tao was intrigued that sport could excite the emotions, our emotions, and he looked on with interest as Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett traded the world middle distance records. He admired Renaissance men such as Jonathan Miller who could see the connection between science and art. He liked pointing out that Einstein was a perceptive music critic and agreed that in The Glass Bead Game Hermann Hesse approached something of an understanding of the philosophy of maths and science.
As a student in London Tao Kiang had studied engineering, music and English literature, but then moved on to physics, discovering another passion.
He wrote his thesis on asteroids. His research work on cosmology and relativity had brought him to Dublin for a post at Dunsink Observatory.
With him came his artist wife Trudi and three of their four children, Ingmar, Sophie and Tanya. Jessica came later, she was born here. In my mind’s eye, I see Tao and Trudi with Trudi’s mother, Mrs Kaczmarek, Tanya and Sophie sharing a large bowl of cherries that had just arrived in from Zurich with Trudi’s mother.
Standing in his office at the front of the house Tao explained his theories of black holes and the Big Bang, he made it sound like a glorious ballet, outer space as an ethereal painting. He could be so funny, as quick as lightening and so annoyed. No one impersonates this scientist who mastered Scottish dancing and so much else as well as Jessica does. For all who knew Tao he personified the hunger of the intellect. It is fitting he has a mini planet named after him. He gave so much to his own country and secured China’s admission to the International Astronomical Union in 1982.
It was Tao who in 1975 co-founded the Irish-Chinese Cultural Society.
“I think you want this,” he once said, gleefully presenting me with a Beethoven recording and waved the thanks away. At the recent celebration of Tao’s life, his humour, eccentricity and mercurial genius dominated the anecdotes. He died while discussing with Trudi the beauties of Milan’s period architecture. Always the artist.
EB