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January 10, 2015

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Top science award goes to nuclear scientist

CHINESE nuclear physicist Yu Min, who was behind the country’s first successful hydrogen bomb test, won China’s top science and technology accolade yesterday.

President Xi Jinping presented the State Supreme Science and Technology Award to Yu, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a ceremony in Beijing.

Yu, born in north China’s Tianjin in 1926, was behind China’s first successful hydrogen bomb test in the Cold War era.

On January 12, 1961, the late Qian Sanqiang, “Father of China’s Atomic Bomb,” asked him to research hydrogen bomb theories.

“I accepted without hesitation,” Yu recalled.

The young scientist who was then pursuing theoretical studies on the nucleus shifted focus and embarked on a clandestine career lasting 28 years. It was not until 1988 when the mission was fully declassified that Yu’s wife found out what her husband had really been up to.

Yu said: “No one’s name is indelible in history, but it is quite comforting to know that one has contributed to the motherland’s prosperity.”

Fifty-four projects involving Shanghai scientists won State Science and Technology Prizes.

The Shanghai Science and Technology Commission said city projects accounted for 16.5 percent of all the prizes awarded, the 13th consecutive year of double figures.

Projects included research on new materials and the development of e-commerce payment platforms.

About 42 percent of Shanghai’s projects were closely related to people’s everyday lives in the fields of medicine, health and pollution.

Commission officials noted the emergence of younger scientists leading projects.

Whereas previously research might have been led by scientists in their 60s and 70s, most of the current crop are under 55 years of age.

The youngest was 43-year-old Guan Haibing from Jiao Tong University who developed key technology in cloud computing services.

Other winners included Dr Zhu Jianhong from Huashan Hospital for his research into brain tissue repair and Dr Dong Jian from Zhongshan Hospital for his devotion to public health education on lumbar disc herniation, or slipped discs.




 

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