Award
Doctor of Science honoris causa 榮譽理學博士
Year of Award
2016
Biography
Prof Yang’s contribution to nuclear physics research and its applications is widely esteemed by the scientific community. He was selected to go to the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen (Denmark) in 1963 to further his work in nuclear physics, specialising in nuclear spectroscopy. His research confirming a type of single particle motion in nuclei at that time is still widely cited by the international nuclear physics community. Prof Yang resumed his teaching and nuclear physics research at Fudan University in 1965, and turned his focus to the advancement of nuclear physics in China: the nation’s first accelerator-based atomic and nuclear physics laboratory was built under his persistent effort and leadership. He later served as Director of the Shanghai Institute of Nuclear Research (now called Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. On account of his distinguished and ground-breaking achievement in nuclear physics research, Prof Yang was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991, and a fellow of The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World in the same year.
He was appointed Vice-President of Fudan in 1992 and in 1993, he was installed as President of Fudan, and led the University during his six-year tenure to become a high-quality, people-oriented university that excels in both the humanities and the sciences. In 2001, Prof Yang was appointed Chancellor of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. In 2004, Prof Yang led Nottingham to establish the University of Nottingham Ningbo — China’s first Sino-foreign collaborative university with full pedagogical independence granted to the foreign partner.
Prof Yang was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa by Lingnan University.
Prof Yang Fujia 楊福家院士