Aircraft designer and nuclear expert win top national science award

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President Xi Jinping presented China's top science award to aircraft designer Gu Songfen and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong on Wednesday.

Two scientists, aircraft designer Gu Songfen and nuclear expert Wang Dazhong, won China's top science award Wednesday for their outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation.

Gu Songfen, born in 1930 in Jiangsu province, is a renowned aircraft designer. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

He was in charge of the aerodynamic design of the Shenyang JJ-1, China's first jet trainer, and of the Shenyang J-8 and J-8-II, China's first high-speed, high-altitude interceptors, laying the cornerstone for subsonic and supersonic aircraft design in the country.

Gu is the only academician of both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering in the national aviation industry.

From 1961 to 1986, he served as chief designer and director of the Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, which is part of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China.

Wang Dazhong, born in 1935 in Hebei province, is an internationally renowned nuclear energy scientist and educator. He graduated from the Department of Engineering Physics at Tsinghua University in 1958 and received his doctoral degree in natural sciences from RWTH Aachen University in Germany in 1982.

He has served as the director and chief engineer of Tsinghua University's Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, as well as the president of the university itself.

He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Wang has worked in nuclear energy technology for decades, presiding over the research, design, construction and operation of China's first 5MW Low Temperature Nuclear Heating Reactor (NHR-5) and first 10MW High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTR-10).