Hu Ning
Encyclopedia
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
.
Biography
Hu was born in SuqianSuqian
Suqian is a prefecture-level city in northern Jiangsu Province, People's Republic of China. It borders Xuzhou to the northwest, Lianyungang to the northeast, Huai'an to the south, and the province of Anhui to the west.-Administration:...
, Jiangsu
Jiangsu
' is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning , and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "苏" , the second character of its name...
province, China in 11 February 1916. From 1928 to 1934, Hu studied at the Zhenjiang High School (鎮江中學) in Zhenjiang
Zhenjiang
Zhenjiang is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Jiangsu province in the eastern People's Republic of China . Sitting on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, it borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the west, Changzhou to the east, and Yangzhou across the river to the north.Once...
, and the Suzhou High School (蘇州中學) in Suzhou
Suzhou
Suzhou , previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part...
. In 1935, Hu studied at the physical department of Zhejiang University
Zhejiang University
Zhejiang University , sometimes referred to as Zheda, is a national university in China. Founded in 1897, Zhejiang University is one of China's oldest institutions of higher education...
in Hangzhou
Hangzhou
Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...
, Zhejiang
Zhejiang
Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...
. From 1935 to 1937, Hu studied in the department of physics at Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...
in Beijing, where he graduated in 1938.
After his graduation from Tsinghua, Hu became the teaching assistant
Teaching assistant
A teaching assistant is an individual who assists a professor or teacher with instructional responsibilities. TAs include graduate teaching assistants , who are graduate students; undergraduate teaching assistants , who are undergraduate students; secondary school TAs, who are either high school...
for his professor Zhou Peiyuan
Zhou Peiyuan
Zhou Peiyuan was a renowned theoretical physicist of China. He was a former president of Peking University, and an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences ....
in the department of physics.
In 1940, Hu examed and won the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program
Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program
The Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program was a scholarship program funded by Boxer Rebellion indemnity money paid to the United States that provided for Chinese students to study in the U.S...
. In 1941, Hu went to study in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Hu studied fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics
Fluid mechanics is the study of fluids and the forces on them. Fluid mechanics can be divided into fluid statics, the study of fluids at rest; fluid kinematics, the study of fluids in motion; and fluid dynamics, the study of the effect of forces on fluid motion...
at the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
. His doctoral advisor was Theodore von Kármán
Theodore von Karman
Theodore von Kármán was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronautics and astronautics. He is responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics, notably his work on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization...
. Hu also studied quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
under Paul Sophus Epstein
Paul Sophus Epstein
Paul Sophus Epstein was a Russian-American mathematical physicist...
during this period. Hu obtained his PhD in 1943 from Caltech.
From 1944 to 1945, Hu stayed at the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
, and studied quantum field theory
Quantum field theory
Quantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...
and basic particles theories under Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after being nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or...
. From 1946 to 1949, Hu visited Europe. He visited the research institute of high energy physics in Dublin, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, and the Niels Bohr Institute
Niels Bohr Institute
The Niels Bohr Institute is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics....
in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
. Hu went back to the United States, and from 1949 to 1950, Hu did research at the nuclear physics department of the Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, New York.
In 1950, invited by the physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Ta-You Wu
Ta-You Wu
Wu Ta-You was a Chinese-born atomic and nuclear theoretical physicist who worked in the United States, Canada, mainland China, and Taiwan. He has been called the "Father of Chinese Physics."...
(at that time, Wu headed the Theoretical Physics Division of the Canadian National Research Council), Hu went to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and did research and lectured there.
In 1951, Hu accepted the invitation from Peking University
Peking University
Peking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...
in Beijing, and went back to China. Hu was a long-time professor in the department of physics at Peking University. Since 1953, Hu was a researcher at the Institute of Modern Physics (近代物理研究所) and the Institute of Nuclear Physics (原子能研究所) of the 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...
. From 1956 to 1959, Hu was a researcher and group leader at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research
The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR , in Dubna, Moscow Oblast , Russia, is an international research centre for nuclear sciences, with 5500 staff members, 1200 researchers including 1000 Ph.D.s from eighteen member states The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, JINR , in Dubna, Moscow...
, USSR. Since 1980, Hu was a researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (理論物理研究所) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Hu was elected academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. Hu was pointed the first director-general
Director-general
The term director-general is a title given the highest executive officer within a governmental, statutory, NGO, third sector or not-for-profit institution.-European Union:...
of Peking University Research Institute of Theoretical Physics (北京大學理論物理研究所)
Hu died in Beijing on 16 December 1997.
Publications
Hu wrote or edited some earliest textbooks of relativityTheory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
and quantum physics in China, which are still in use:
- 《電動力學》(Electrodynamics); 1963
- 《场的量子理论》(Quantum Field Theory); 1964
- 《廣義相對論和引力場理論》(General Relativity and Gravitation); ISBN 7-03-007835-7; republished in 2000
External links
- ScienceNet.com News: 著名理论物理学家胡宁先生铜像在北大落成 (The bronze statue of Prof. Hu Ning is completed in Peking University campus)
- The biography of Hu Ning from BaiduBaiduBaidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
.com EncyclopediaEncyclopediaAn encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge.... - The biography of Hu Ning from Hudong.com
- The biography of Hu Ning, by Guan Hong; ISBN 9787301135396/7301135394