Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1998

Prof. Wu Jie-ping BS, MD, FACP(Hon), FRCSEd(Hon) P rof. Wu Jie-ping, China's leading authority on urology, is the honorary president of Beijing Medical University and honorary director of that university's Institute of Urology, and the honorary president of the Peking Union Medical College. A native of Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, Prof. Wu was brought up in Tianjin. His father, Mr. Wu Jingyi, was an industrialist in the early days of republican China, and had contact w i th the West. As a result of family influence, Prof. Wu has cultivated from an early age an enlightened and practical turn of mind. When he was 16, at the bidding of his father. Prof. Wu enrolled as a student at the renowned Peking U n i on Me d i c al College where he embarked on his medical studies. Following his graduation he stayed on at the college, and after serving his internship, obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the age of 25. In 1946 he set up the urological surgery unit at the Peking Medical College, thereby laying the foundation for urological studies in China. He set up the Teaching and Research Unit in Urology of the Beijing Medical University in 1964. In 1978 it became the Institute of Urology which is known all over the world today. In 1947 Prof. Wu, in his determination to better serve his patients, proceeded to the University of Chicago for postgraduate work. There Prof. Wu and his fellow researchers worked under Prof. Charles Huggins, who laid the cornerstone for modern endocrinotherapy in clinical oncology and who was to become a Nobel laureate, and Prof. Reed Nesbit, an authority on endoscopic prostatectomy. Prof. Wu distinguished himself in his work and achieved many successes in urological surgery research. In late 1948 Prof. Wu, now equipped with the most advanced medical knowledge and urged on by a strong love for bis country and his people, returned to teaching and research in China, where he followed steadfastly his original resolve to promote medical knowledge and to train future generations of medical practitioners. Over the decades his efforts at training medical students bore abundant fruit. When one surveys the leading urologists in China, one finds that a great many of them are Prof. Wu's former students. Prof. Wu, who knows his students well and tailors his teaching to their natural bent, brought out the best in the new generations of urology experts and this was recognized by the Beijing Me d i c al Un i v e r s i ty w h en he was awarded the Bo Le Prize. Apart from teaching at the University, Prof. Wu also distinguished himself i n medical research and in clinical work. He performed augmentation cystoplasty using the caecum as early as the 1950s, and devised what has come to be known as theWu Catheter, a special urethral catheter which facilitates prostate hyperplasia surgery. In 1960 Prof. Wu's medical research team performed the first cadaveric kidney transplant in China w i th resounding success. In the early sixties Prof. Wu gained world recognition for a valuable s t udy on the g r o w th and the physiological conditions of the prostates of 26 eunuchs who had served at court during the last days of the Qing Dynasty. Findings of that study now form a uniquely important document in the realm of urology. Prof. Wu's principal areas of research include late complications of renal tuberculosis, vas sterilization, adrenal surgery, and post- citation Chinese University Bulletin Spring • Summer 1998 8