Getty Images, U.S. House of Representatives D. S. Saund did not set out to become the first Asian American to serve in the House of Representatives. He did not even intend to remain in the United States for more than a few years, expecting to return home to India after learning the business of fruit canning. But after earning a doctorate in mathematics in 1924 — he studied both agriculture and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley — his family told him that the anti-British comments he had made while in the U.S. were being monitored, according to a biography on the House ...