Ten scientists have won the top award, of 5 million yuan ($649,350) 4.5 million yuan ($584,400) for research and 500,000 yuan ($64,900) as personal reward for their efforts, since China started giving the National Supreme Scientific and Technological Award since 1999.
Mathematician Wu Wenjun and rice scientist Yuan Longping won the 2000 National Supreme Scientific and Technological Award.
The veteran mathematician was born in 1919, and completed his PhD at the University of Strassbourg in France at the age of 30. His contribution to the development of analysissitus, a branch of mathematics, has been immense, and his researches have been the basis for many modern mathematical methods across the world.
Yuan Longping, who was born 1930, has helped feed millions of Chinese through the hybrid rice he developed by combining the wild varieties of rice. His hybrid rice is now cultivated in 50 percent of the country paddy fields and has helped increase the total 20 billion kilograms.
Physicist Huang Kun and computer scientist Wang Xuan won the top prizes in 2001. Wang studied computer science for a long time and developed the first technology to process Chinese characters for computers. Thanks to his pioneering efforts, Chinese characters can today keyed in on computers.
Huang, born in 1919 in Zhejiang Province, is the founder of solid physics and semiconductor physics in China. Huang's textbook on solid physics, written in 1948, used to be used for undergraduate classes across the world till the mid-1980s.
The 2002 supreme award was given to Jin Yilian, a 74-year-old computer scientist from the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Jin is one of the pioneers in the development of high performance computers. Over the past five decades, he has made fundamental contributions to the development of large-scale, high performance computers.
A year later, geologist Liu Dongsheng and space and aviation scientist Wang Yongzhi won the National Supreme Scientific and Technological Award. Born in 1917, Liu has devoted his life to the study of ancient soil. His studies have revealed geological transformations and contributed to the research on vertebrates, up to million years old, in China.
Wang Yongzhi was born in 1932 and is the founder and general engineer of China's manned spaceship since 1992.
No research or technological work was found good enough for the 2004 supreme award, but the next year it went to 90-year-old atmospheric physicist Ye Duzheng, and the 84-year-old liver and gallbladder specialist Wu Mengchao.
Wu worked in the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai. Thousands of liver cancer patients in China have been able to fight the disease and prolong their life span in the past decade, thanks to Wu's advanced studies and skilled operation techniques.
A leading name in the world meteorological community, Ye has contributed greatly to the understanding of general circulation over Asia as well as the unique role of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau in the world's climate.
(China Daily 02/28/2007 page2)
