Zhou Tongqing
Zhou Tongqing (
Early life and education
Zhou was born on 21 December 1907 in Kunshan, Jiangsu, during the Qing dynasty.[2][3] After graduating in 1929 from the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University, he won a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study at Princeton University in the United States.[4]
He studied under
Career
Republic of China
After earning his Ph.D., Zhou returned to China in 1933 and accepted a professorship in the Department of Physics of Peking University, where he established an optical lab. In 1936, Zhou was appointed Chair of the Physics Department of National Central University (NCU) in Nanjing. A year later, however, the Empire of Japan invaded China and occupied Nanjing, China's then capital. NCU evacuated Nanjing and moved with the Nationalist government to the wartime capital of Chongqing.[2]
In 1943, Zhou transferred to
After the surrender of Japan in 1945, Chiao Tung University returned to Shanghai. Zhou served as dean of the university's School of Sciences and established its nuclear physics lab.[2]
People's Republic of China
After the
In 1953, Fudan University established the X-ray Tube Laboratory with Zhou as its director and Fang as vice director. Soon they developed China's first X-ray tube.[2][4] He also made contributions to the research of electric discharge in gases and vacuum tube technology.[4] In 1955, Zhou was elected as a founding member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.[2]
Persecution and death
During the
When the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, many prominent academics came under persecution. At the Fudan Physics Department, Zhou and his colleague Mao Qingxian (毛清献) were targeted for the worst treatment. The beatings and public humiliation drove Mao to suicide.[2] Although the worst atrocities were over by 1969 and Zhou was later politically rehabilitated, he suffered from poor health for the rest of his life.[2]
On 13 February 1989, Zhou died in Shanghai at the age of 81.[2]