Chen Zhongwei was an expert of orthopedic surgery and microsurgery, one of the pioneers of the process of reattaching severed limbs.

Chen was born in Ningbo

Ningbo

Ningbo is a seaport city of northeastern Zhejiang province, Eastern China. Holding sub-provincial administrative status, the municipality has a population of 7,605,700 inhabitants at the 2010 census whom 3,089,180 in the built up area made of 6 urban districts. It lies south of the Hangzhou Bay,...

 on October 1, 1929. In 1954 he graduated from the second medical college of Shanghai, and became the subdecanal of the Sixth People's Hospital in Shanghai later. In 1981 he was selected as a commissioner of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Chinese Academy of Sciences , formerly known as Academia Sinica, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is an institution of the State Council of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with institutes all over the People's Republic of China...

. He served as the president of International Society for Reconstructive Microsurgery from 1985 to 1988, and became a member of TWAS in 1986.

Chen was most notable for successfully replantating the right hand of a Chinese factory worker named Wang Cunbo in 1963. And later he used microsurgical technique in the severed limbs reattaching operation, highly increased the success rate of replantating.

Chen died in Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

on March 23, 2004 because of an accident.