Explosives expert Zheng Zhemin dies at 97

Zheng Zhemin, an academician of both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a winner of the State Scientific and Technological Award, died of disease at 97 on Wednesday.

Zheng, born in Jinan, East China's Shandong province on Oct 2, 1924, devoted himself to research in the areas of elastic mechanics, explosive processing and underground nuclear detonations.

Zheng obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Tsinghua University in 1947, and earned his Master of Science and PhD from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Qian Xuesen.

Zheng returned to China in 1955. He joined the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed the basic theories for explosive mechanics and developed the technologies of explosive forming and explosive treatment of underwater soft foundations.

Zheng was also a top researcher at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also a foreign member of the United States National Academy of Engineering.

His theories on explosive mechanics have been applied to solve practical problems in engineering projects.