Physicist Huang Kun: Scientific research funds do not fall into the void

Huang Kun: Scientific research funds do not fall into the void

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Huang Kun, an internationally renowned physicist and one of the founders of Solid State Physics and Semiconductor Physics in China, especially cherishes the state's scientific research funds.

"Basic research should also be calculated as input and output, and the money spent on this research paper is not worth it." One of Huang Kun's simple beliefs is that "to do basic research, when you spend money, you should contribute to science accordingly." ”

"Mr. Huang has only applied for the National Natural Science Foundation of China once in his life." Zhu Bangfen, a student of Huang Kun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Tsinghua University, recalled.

In 1986, after Huang Kun retired from the position of director of the Institute of Semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he led 11 researchers in the theoretical group to apply for a surface project for a period of 3 years and a total of 20,000 yuan.

"The project has been completed very well, and a number of research results with important international influence have been produced, which has effectively promoted the national research in the emerging field of semiconductor superlattice microstructure." Zhu Bangfen said.

With little money, Huang Kun always tried every means to make "good steel used on the blade". There are many funds, and he follows the principle of "one dollar does not fall into the void", whenever he gets a large amount of funds allocated by the State Science and Technology Commission, he is like walking on thin ice, and he has written 4 words for this: Sleep is not solid.

"During his tenure as director, because the state attaches great importance to the development of large-scale integrated circuits, more funds have been allocated to the institute, although these funds are not used by himself, but for the research room for the development of devices and materials, Mr. Huang is afraid that the cost is not appropriate, he has not made the predetermined results, and has wasted the people's hard-earned money." Zhu Bangfen said.

At that time, Huang Kun especially appreciated that the experimenters built experimental devices on the basis of their unique ideas, built experimental devices on their own, and then made original research results. For some people who only rely on expensive "foreign equipment" and do some measurement work, they do not think so.

"Mr. Huang doesn't care about his own money." Zhu Bangfen said, "He is strict with himself and never takes advantage of the country in the slightest." He paid all the 20,000 yuan of salary he had been reissued with party dues; he never received the installation fees and subsidies for going abroad; he paid for the postage of a large number of domestic and foreign work letters; and when he had to call and use the car for personal affairs, he had to pay the fee. ”

As a member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955, he could be graded as a "first-class professor" according to the regulations, but Huang Kun took the initiative to ask to be designated as a "second-level professor", feeling that he and Rao Yutai, Ye Qisun, Zhou Peiyuan and other teachers received the same salary, and he was uneasy.

In 1984, Huang Kun visited the United States as "Professor Snow", and he saved money and used the money saved from foreign financial support to purchase a fully automatic slide projector and voltage regulator for the semiconductor institute's academic exchanges with foreign countries. In February 1986, the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Marx-Planck Association in Germany invited him to participate in the academic conference celebrating Flolisch's 80th birthday, and as a result, Huang Kun saved nearly 80% of the living expenses provided by foreign parties and bought an electronic typewriter for the work of foreign comrades of the Semiconductor Institute.

Huang Kun (1919-2005), the founder of lattice dynamics and the pioneer of the phononic physics department, first proposed the theory of polyphonic optical transition and polyphonon radiation-free transition. In 1945, Huang Kun became a graduate student at the University of Bresto as a "Gengzi Indemnity" student, and received his doctorate in 1948, followed by a visiting scholar at Professor Born at the University of Edinburgh and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of Liverpool. At the end of 1951, after returning to China, Huang Kun worked in Peking University, institute of semiconductors of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other units, and won the 1995 Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Achievement Award and the 2001 National Supreme Science and Technology Award.

Reporter Ma Aiping