Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1999

Zhang Cunhao B.S. Ch.E., M.S. Ch.E. Prof. Zhang Cunhao, president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, is a chemist of international renown. His family came from Wudi in Shandong and he was bom in Tianjin in 1928. He moved with his family to Chongqing at the age of nine, and was admitted to Nankai Secondary School at ten. That was the time of the Japanese invasion of China and, in the turmoil of war, the young Zhang moved again from Chongqing to Fujian, and then further to Shaoguan, Hengyang, and Guiyang, sometimes covering a hundred miles a day. After a tortuous journey, Prof. Zhang entered the Department of Chemical Engineering at Central University in Chongqing, obtaining his degree i n 1947. He then proceeded to enrol in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Nankai University in Tianjin for a master's programme, and in 1948 he went to the United States. He took the Master of Science in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan in 1950, returning to China later in that year. Since 1951 he has been engaged in research work at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During these years he has held the position of associate research professor, professor, deputy director, and eventually director. Prof. Zhang's research interest encompasses physical chemistry, chemical dynamics, laser chemistry, and chemical lasers. During the early fifties he led a research team which worked successfully on the synthesis of liquid fuel from water gas. This produced an efficient catalyst, which, when applied to synthesis of liquid fuels from water gas on a fluidized bed, surpassed achievements made in Britain, the United States, Germany, and Japan at the time in terms of effectiveness and product distribution. I n the sixties Prof. Zhang directed research on rocket propellant and motor combustion with remarkable achievements, and the multilayer combustion theory of solid propellant he propounded earned much praise from the scientific community worldwide well into the eighties. From the 1970s on, Prof. Zhang turned his attention to laser chemistry and chemical lasers. In the eighties he placed special emphasis on the chemistry and spectroscopy of molecules in excited states and on short wavelength chemical lasers. Such research initiated studies in double resonance multi-photon Chinese University Bulletin Spring • Summer 1999