Opening remarks: In the course of a hundred years of extraordinary struggle, generation after generation of Chinese communists have stubbornly struggled and struggled unremittingly, and a large number of revolutionary martyrs, heroes, and advanced models have emerged, forming a series of great spirits, building up the spiritual genealogy of Chinese communists, and providing rich nourishment for building the party and rejuvenating the party and strengthening the party. Zhejiang University has opened a column entitled "Zhejiang University in the Spiritual Genealogy of the Communist Party of China", giving full play to the school's advantages in red resources, educating and guiding teachers and students to inherit red genes, continuing the fine traditions, firmly accelerating the confidence of moving towards the forefront of world-class universities, and presenting gifts to the centenary of the founding of the party with more excellent results. Today, we come to listen to the story of Mr. Gu Chaohao.
He joined the party as a teenager, "knowing the hatred of the country in his youth, and throwing his pen to ask for help";
He became famous in middle age, but resolutely changed his research direction, only to closely integrate national needs with scientific research goals and help national defense scientific research;
He is honored and honored, the highest national science and technology award, the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation Science and Technology Achievement Award, the Hua Luogeng Mathematics Award...
"The first is to be a revolutionary and save the country and the people; the second is to be a scientist and change the world." This is the belief he has adhered to since childhood, and it is also the most authentic portrayal of his life, he is Gu Chaohao, a 1943 alumnus of the Department of Mathematics of Zhejiang University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > for the country and the people, party members have the responsibility first</h1>
In early 1940, at the age of 14, Gu Chaohao was influenced by his brother to become a communist party member, joined the grass-roots organization of the Communist Party of China in Wenzhou Middle School, which was still underground, went to the countryside to propagate anti-Japanese propaganda, and began his revolutionary career.
In September 1943, Gu Chaohao entered the Longquan Branch of Zhejiang University and became a student in the Department of Mathematics. During his studies at Zhejiang University, he actively participated in various progressive student movements, organized the "Qiushi Society" with his classmates, and led his classmates to participate in the "anti-hunger and anti-civil war" movement.
In October 1947, Yu Zisan, president of the Student Self-Government Association of Zhejiang University, was illegally arrested and died in prison. Subsequently, more than 100,000 students in 12 cities of Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beiping heard the news and set off a struggle against persecution "against illegal arrests, against spies, and against the massacre of young people." The Zhejiang University Student Organization also called on all teachers and students of the school to rise up and resist on the grounds of the heroic sacrifice of Comrade Yu Zisan.
Because he had done a lot of work in previous movements and had the courage to declare war on the evil forces, Gu Chaohao was introduced and joined another system of Zhejiang University party organizations: on the one hand, he cooperated with Zhejiang University youth movement organizations to engage in student movements, and on the other hand, he united activists and developed party organizations. In addition, he has good homework, so he has a high prestige among students. Coinciding with the student government election, a sobering slogan appeared on the school's poster: science + democracy = Gu Chaohao. At the time of ticketing, Gu Chaohao was elected as one of the main leaders of the student union with the highest number of votes.
On the eve of liberation, in accordance with the requirements of the party organization, he participated in the struggle to preserve The Scientific and Technological Institutions of Hangzhou and usher in liberation. Ignoring the white terror and the danger to his life, he traveled around and contacted almost all the scientific and technological units to ensure that they were intact in the hands of the people. At the same time, he also promoted the uprising of the Radar Research Institute, made it usher in liberation in a complete and complete manner, preserved a number of engineering and technical personnel for the new China's radar entrepreneurship, and laid the foundation for the formation of the first radar unit of the People's Air Force after liberation.
"Young people must aspire to do great things, not to become big officials." In 1938, a sentence gu chaohao saw on the wall of a school hall in Wenzhou affected his life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="91" > diligent study and moral cultivation, seeking truth and educating talents</h1>
During his studies at Zhejiang University Longquan Campus, Gu Chaohao began his own mathematical journey. Although he often went hungry and had to fight against infectious diseases such as plague, the hardships of life did not frighten Gu Chaohao, who through learning calculus, constantly overcame his less meticulous shortcomings and improved his calculus ability and ability to solve and apply problems.
At that time, the Department of Mathematics of Zhejiang University had world-class masters such as Su Buqing and Chen Jiangong, Su Buqing taught "comprehensive geometry", and Chen Jiangong taught "complex variable function theory". Gu Chaohao was very interested in both courses, so he squeezed out time to listen to the lectures. Due to the difficulty of the course, the school stipulates that each student can only participate in the discussion of one of the teachers, but because of his talent, Gu Chaohao was allowed to participate in the differential geometry symposium hosted by Professor Su Buqing and the function theory and Fourier analysis seminar hosted by Professor Chen Jiangong. This listening allowed him to find a huge gap between himself and the teacher, he listened carefully to the lecture in class, studied carefully after class, and actively consulted the teacher if he did not understand the problem, and the progress was very fast.
For Gu Chaohao, Su Buqing's well-organized, rigorous reasoning, and rich illustrations and texts made him very fascinated. After graduating from college, he still persevered to listen to Su Buqing's lessons. One day, Su Buqing mentioned in class that in the "general spatial differential geometry", the subspace theory of "K exhibition space" has not yet been established. This inspired Gu Chaohao's strong desire to innovate, and he tried to think about this problem. As he slept one night, inspiration woke him up like a breeze and a new approach entered his mind. After several days of complicated calculations, it was finally successful. Su Buqing was very happy after listening to Gu Chaohao's report, and together they also carried out computational verification of this new method and wrote it into a monograph as a chapter. In 1956, the inaugural issue of the Soviet journal Mathematical Review published a lengthy review that systematically introduced Gu Chaohao's new approach to studying the K exhibition space.
"Lonely mountain city night, passion Zhejiang waterside." The students are angry about state affairs, and the teachers and mothers are worried about cooking smoke. The string song will never quit, and the river tide will not be idle. Not afraid of eccentricity, the song can linger. Gu Chaohao once wrote such a poem with a pen, and his enthusiasm for the motherland and his love for scholarship can be seen in the text.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="93" > studied hard and achieved fruitful scientific research</h1>
"The most exciting thing about mathematics is that it can be used to explain or solve important problems in various disciplines, while at the same time constantly absorbing the achievements of other disciplines, expanding and enriching their own research, and making great contributions to national construction." In the war-torn years, he threw himself into the historical torrent of resisting Japan and saving the country and shouldered the responsibility of his homeland; in the peaceful years, he devoted himself to the great cause of scientific research and continued to write the original intention and responsibility of party members.
In 1956, the state formulated a 12-year scientific and technological plan. At that time, computational mathematics, probability theory, and partial differential equations were all relatively weak in New China, and the state hoped to make breakthroughs in these fields. In 1958, when the Soviet Union's Sputnik went to the sky, Gu Chaohao, who was studying in Moscow, resolutely decided to reclaim the weak garden of partial differential equations in the field of mathematics in China. This means that he has to give up his achievements in the field of differential geometry, return to zero, and then face the difficulties and start again.
In Yang Zhenning's eyes, Gu Chaohao's choice is to "stand on the mountain and look down, see the overall situation" - the new requirements put forward by the development of cutting-edge technology on mathematics, and the development of mathematics can promote the upgrading of science and technology. For example, Gu Chaohao is committed to applying mathematics to aerospace, and through his repeated design and selection of methods, he has played a leading role in the calculation of the "supersonic orbit of blunt-headed objects" of China's missiles, and has made contributions to China's national defense scientific research. He also achieved a series of creative results in the frontier field of partial differential equations "solitons and integrable systems", serving as the chief scientist of the first National Climbing Program project "Nonlinear Science".
Differential geometry, partial differential equations, and mathematical physics are affectionately called the "Golden Triangle" by Gu Chaohao. In order to dig up these "gold", he and his wife, Academician Hu Hesheng, who is also a mathematician, made daily life into a subtraction problem, and the time squeezed out was spent on learning. In addition to the most concise life procedures, the couple is left to bury their heads in the table and look for the numbers.
In the eyes of his classmates, Gu Chaohao has a "changeable" spirit in his studies. This kind of "changeable" is manifested in the unique personal style and super innovation ability of scientists, but in fact, it stems from Gu Chaohao's strong sense of social responsibility - starting from the needs of the construction of the motherland, in order to continuously discover the innovation points of the discipline.
In the kingdom of mathematics, Gu Chaohao has never stopped exploring. At the age of 75, he published 3 papers a year; he won the highest national science and technology award, the second and third prizes of the Natural Science Award, as well as the Hua Luogeng Mathematics Award, the He Liang He Li Foundation Science and Technology Progress Award and other awards.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="95" > is a teacher, peach and plum all over the world</h1>
"People have no taste in their words, but I have endless taste." Mentors are inspired, and rare books are rich. Solve the problem in one way, and seek to find a puzzle. Fortunately, the Sangzi Sect was moved for life. This poem written by Gu Chaohao expresses his attachment to mathematics and his understanding of teaching and educating people.
He has long taught basic mathematics courses for undergraduates, and has also opened many specialized courses, and the students are most impressed by him as "strict" and "humble".
Once, he went out with his students. Just when everyone was in high spirits and discussing going to eat special snacks, Gu Chaohao suddenly said that one of his mathematical problems had thought of a solution. The crowd felt inexplicable at first, but with it came admiration for him. His student, Mu Mu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recalled that when preparing for the defense of his doctoral dissertation, although the thesis was affirmed by Gu Chaohao, he was still "sent" by Gu Chaohao to stay at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics for half a year before participating in the defense, because "the physical basis of the atmosphere is not enough." Gu Chaohao believes that teachers should constantly inspire students' interest in innovation and improve students' awareness and ability to innovate. When students are mobilized, the ability to innovate and the level of research can be improved, and more practical problems can be solved.
"When I was a student of Mr. Gu, mr. Gu personally guided the determination of the topic and the specific practice of the paper, but he never signed the paper." His student, Hong Jiaxing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recalled that Gu Chaohao respected the students' academic achievements and was very cautious about his signature. Unless individual research accounts for more than half of the scientific research process, or very substantial work is done, it is resolutely not signed. Some students once took the initiative to add Gu Chaohao's name to the paper, and after being known, they resolutely took it. Of the more than 130 papers published by Gu Chaohao, nearly 80% of them were independently published by himself.
"He led everyone to explore and open the way. All the difficult things at the beginning of the business were done by Mr. Gu, and after finding a road to the gold mine, he gave the gold mine to the young people who followed him to continue digging, and he took another group of young people to find another gold mine. Hong Jiaxing compared Gu Chaohao's road to educating people.
Over the past few decades, among the students who have been taught by Mr. Gu at the undergraduate and graduate levels, 9 academicians of the two academies such as Li Daqian, Hong Jiaxing, and Mu Mu have been produced, and a large number of outstanding senior mathematical talents have been produced. At the age of 80, Gu Chaohao still insists on taking graduate students, insisting on discussing with students at least two and a half days a week, and even opening small stoves for some students...
On August 6, 2009, with the approval of the International Minor Planet Center and the International Minor Planet Nomenclature Committee, the asteroid numbered 171448 was officially named "Gu Chaohao Star". Today, the Slovaks have gone, and this star is still silently shining, the stars are like traces, and the stars are eternal.
Reorganization: Shi Yutong, student press corps of the Rong Media Center of Zhejiang University
The pictures come from the official website of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Party Building Hall of Zhejiang University, the People's Network, the Central Broadcasting Network, etc
This article was edited by Chen Liting, a student journalist at the Rong Media Center of Zhejiang University
Editor-in-Charge: Zhou Yiying