Lee Yong-gyu (1881–unknown), regarded as the Republic of Korea’s first chemist; Kwon Kyung-hwan (1929–2024), a recently deceased authority in topology; Shim Sang-chul (1936–2002), a pioneer of Korea’s organic photochemistry; Lee Whi-so (1935–1977), a brilliant physicist whose sudden death has given rise to many suspicions; and Kim Sam-soon (1909–2001), the first female scientist in the Republic of Korea.

Although their traces in our country’s history may be faint, these scientists clearly opened the way for the development of Korean science and technology. A book that gives a full-scale examination of the modern and contemporary scientists who laid the foundations of Korean science from the Japanese colonial period through the post‑liberation era has been published and is drawing attention. The book is "The Birth of Korean Scientists," recently published by Professor Geun-bae Kim of Jeonbuk National University (JBNU), College of Natural Science, Department of Science Studies, and his research team.

This book is the first outcome of the six-volume series "Biographical Series of Korean Science and Technology Figures," planned on the basis of 15 years of archival work by Professor Geun-bae Kim’s research team. It uncovers modern and contemporary Korean scientists who had been buried in history and traces their lives and legacies.

Research on modern and contemporary Korean scientists has been extremely limited, and their names have been little known to the public. It is also true that the lives of figures from this period have primarily been discussed from political-historical perspectives such as pro-Japanese collaboration versus independence activism, or left versus right. That is why the publication of this book is especially significant.

The book profiles a total of 30 modern and contemporary scientists. It includes Lee Yong-gyu (1881–unknown), Korea’s first chemist who developed peony ink for fountain pens as part of the Joseon Product Promotion Movement; Kim Ryang-ha (1901–unknown), the first Korean to be mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate after being the first in the world to extract crystalline vitamin E; Ri Rim-hak (1922–2005), a mathematician who discovered an unsolved problem in a journal published by the American Mathematical Society among the debris of Namdaemun Market immediately after liberation and published a paper solving it; and Kim Sam-soon (1909–2001), who overcame the double discrimination of being a colonized woman to become the first Korean woman to earn a doctorate in agricultural science and succeeded in the artificial cultivation of oyster mushrooms. Their outstanding achievements are presented as compelling narratives.

The book also introduces pioneering Korean scientists active during the colonial period and after liberation, such as geologist Park Dong-gil, who overturned the conventional wisdom that there were no diamonds in East Asia by discovering rough diamonds in sand along the Tumen River basin; world-renowned chemist Lee Tae-gyu, who first introduced quantum chemistry to Japan and left the Li-Airing theory bearing his name; and Kang Young-sun, who published early papers on human population genetics in Nature and Science through Korean collective genetics research.

Readers will also encounter the true profiles of figures whose names are at least familiar, such as Seok Ju-myung, known as Dr. Nabi, and Lee Whi-so, who served as head of the Theoretical Physics Department at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and was dubbed a "Nobel Prize maker."

The book records not only the achievements of Korean scientists but also the turbulent lives they had to endure in the bleak modern history. Under such ideological confrontations, many scientists defected to or were abducted to the North, and some, like Lee Tae-gyu, went to the United States. The ensuing war and the intensified ideological conflicts claimed the lives of several scientists, and those who remained were judged and erased by ideology. In the North, scientists were purged during the Corrective Movement, and in the South, mentioning "communist" scientists became taboo.

The book also contains the origins of many aspects of modern Korean life and consciousness hidden in various keywords. Many of the Korean common names for plants and animals in use today were coined in the late 1930s. Around the 50th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s death in 1933, April 19, the date of his death, was designated Science Day. Hangul Day was set on October 9 after complex discussions involving the lunar calendar and Julian and Gregorian solar calendars. After liberation, the Joseon Alpine Club’s civic tree-planting hiking events led to the establishment of Arbor Day in 1949, and in 1978 the Nature Conservation Charter, drafted by botanists Lee Min-jae, Lee Eun-sang, and Lee Sung-nyeong, was proclaimed.

The book also offers many interesting scenes from the perspective of women’s history. Tokyo Women’s Higher Normal School, which Kim Sam-soon attended, did not permit married students to enroll and strictly regulated encounters with men, with internal rules even stating "do not walk side by side with men under 50." When Seok Ju-myung divorced the new woman Kim Yun-ok and cited reasons such as incompatibility with her in-laws and carelessly leaving a buttonless dress shirt untucked, Kim Yun-ok’s friends denounced him as a "male-centered authoritarian" and "arrogant and self-centered," illustrating the era’s clash between new women with a sense of gender equality and outdated institutions and men who remained rooted in traditional female ideals.

Notably, among the 30 scientists mentioned in this book, three have connections to the Jeollabuk-do special autonomous region. They include fish ecologist Choi Ki-chul (Seoul National University), a pioneering figure who worked as a teacher at Jeonju Normal School and trained outstanding biologists; Park Se-hee (Seoul National University), a mathematics "paper king" born in Gunsan who graduated from Gunsan High School and published some 460 papers; and Shim Sang-chul (KAIST), a chemist who graduated top of his class from Seoul National University after attending Jeonju Middle School and Jeonju High School and was once mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate.

The writing team included JBNU Professor Geun-bae Kim and co-editors Eun-kyung Lee and Yoo-jeong Seon, along with about ten historians of science who study the modern and contemporary period. The authors, whose undergraduate majors include microbiology, biology, physics, and chemistry, examined a wide range of materials—papers, books, essays and articles, memoirs, and government documents—and sometimes interviewed bereaved families and students to gain broad insight into each figure’s life. They carefully verified facts through cross-checking. Selected excerpts from memoirs and essays and articles are included so readers can encounter the subjects’ vivid voices in their own words. A thorough bibliography is provided in the book for future researchers. 

It is also significant that the book includes various materials and photographs provided by institutions and bereaved families, such as Jeong Du-hyun’s résumé (held by the National Archives), a portrait of ornithologist Won Hong-gu painted by the Koryoin artist Byun Wol-ryong (provided by the Byun family), a photograph of the first telescope installed on the rooftop of Underwood Hall at Yonsei University’s Yeonhui College (held by Yonsei University Archives), and a handwritten manuscript on statistical mechanics by Cho Sun-tak (provided by his son Cho Kwon-guk). Thanks to the diverse materials and photographs, the activities of the figures and the spirit of the era come alive, enhancing the reader’s engagement with the book.