Dr. An Wang was a Chinese American

Chinese American

Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...

 computer engineer and inventor, and co-founder of computer company Wang Laboratories

Wang Laboratories

Wang Laboratories was a computer company founded in 1951 by Dr. An Wang and Dr. G. Y. Chu. The company was successively headquartered in Cambridge , Tewksbury , and finally in Lowell, Massachusetts . At its peak in the 1980s, Wang Laboratories had annual revenues of $3 billion and employed over...

.
A native of Kunshan

Kunshan

Kunshan is a satellite city in the greater Suzhou region. Administratively, it is a county-level city within the prefecture-level city of Suzhou. It is located in southeastearn part of Jiangsu Province, China, adjacent to Jiangsu's border with the Shanghai Municipality.The total area of ​​Kunshan...

 County in Suzhou

Suzhou

Suzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...

 Prefecture, he was born in Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, and graduated from Chiao Tung University with a degree in electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 in 1940. He emigrated to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in June 1945 to attend Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 for graduate school, earning a PhD in applied physics in 1948. After graduation, he worked at Harvard with Dr Howard Aiken

Howard Aiken

Howard Hathaway Aiken was a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer....

 on the design of the Mark IV

Harvard Mark IV

The Harvard Mark IV was an electronic stored-program computer built by Harvard University under the supervision of Howard Aiken for the United States Air Force. The computer was finished being built in 1952. It stayed at Harvard, where the Air Force used it extensively.The Mark IV was all electronic...

, Aiken's first fully electronic computer.