Joseph Needham, the historian and sinologist famous for authoring/coauthoring the multi-volume series Science and Civilisation in China, was already a world-renown biochemist in his thirties. Needham's interest in Chinese and Chinese science and technology was piqued by three Chinese who came to Cambridge, England in 1937. Of the three, Lu Gwei-djen became Needham's long-time partner and collaborator. Wang Ying-Lai returned to China and became a leader in Chinese biochemical society, and led the efforts of world's first biochemical synthesis of bovine insulin and Ala-transfer-RNA. Shen Shih-Chang's whereabouts was the least known of the three. The author sought out Shen's family in the US and presented his lifelong history in this article.