Wang Zhuxi

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Wang Zhuxi (

Chinese: 王竹溪; Pinyin
: Wáng Zhúxī; June 7, 1911 - January 30, 1983), who had the given name Zhiqi (治淇) and the sobriquet Zhuxi, was a Chinese physicist, philologist, and writer.

Biography

Wang was born in

Cambridge University under the supervision of Ralph Fowler
in 1938.

Upon his return to China, Wang taught statistical physics, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics at the Department of Physics at Tsinghua. After 1952 he became a professor at Peking University, later serving as the vice president of the university.

In recognition of his advancements in the field of physics, he was elected as a founding member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955.

Wang authored several textbooks published by the Peking University Press, including "Thermodynamics" and "Introduction to Statistical Physics". He served as the director of the Terminology Committee of the Chinese Physics Society, and created many Chinese translations of new physics terms.

In the meantime he was devoted to studying philology, serving as an editor of the "New Chinese Dictionary by Division Heads" with 2,500,000 words. It simplified 214 division heads of the Kangxi Dictionary into only 56, and arranged over 50,000 Chinese characters by stroke orders from top to bottom and left to right, which was a convenient system for retrieval.

Many of Wang's students are prominent physicists, including Nobel laureate

Chen-Ning Yang and former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Zhou Guangzhao
. In 2003, a bronze bust of Wang was founded at the Peking University campus.

Works

References