I am reading the novel Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu and the first few chapters follow theoretical physicists who were punished for teaching "reactionary" sciences, with mention of Einstein being thought of as a "capitalist tool."
Is this accurate? Were professors punished for teaching things like relativity? Did professors find ways to legally teach these theories?
What was the study of astrophysics and theoretical physics like during the Cultural Revolution?
Since nobody else has linked it yet, I think you might find this answer to a similar question by u/failedfilosofer interesting. There's also this answer that covers the reception of the Big Bang theory specifically and in comparison to other "totalitarian" states' philosophies of science, by u/restricteddata. He also recommends the article "Fang Lizhi's Big Bang: A Physicist and the State in China," by James H. Williams, in Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30, no. 1 (1999), 49–87, if you're looking for further reading that goes into more detail on a specific case. If you don't have access to the article and do decided you'd like to read it, just let me know and I can PM it to you.