Yu Guochun: Do world-class things and do incognito and bury celebrities

【Remembrance】

Guangming Daily reporter Liu Qian Chen Jianqiang Guangming Daily correspondent Zhao Hui

With the "great power of the country" in mind, he solved the problem of "stuck neck", overcame the technical difficulties of heavy water production, and made important contributions to the start of the new Chinese nuclear industry.

He has applied his knowledge to deeply cultivate distillation technology, and his research results have been applied to thousands of industrial distillation towers, boosting the leapfrog development of petrochemical industrial technology in mainland China.

He immersed himself in academics, taught by example, interpreted the feelings of home and country with his daily efforts and brilliant achievements, and encouraged students to study for a strong country.

He is the founder of the discipline of rectification and separation in mainland China, the forerunner of modern industrial rectification technology, the pioneer of chemical separation engineering science, and the academician Yu Guochun, a professor of Tianjin University.

Photo profile picture of Yu Guochun before his death

At 12:00 on April 6, Mr. Yu Guochun died in Tianjin at the age of 100.

At about 9:00 a.m. on April 8, in the riverside hall of Tianjin First Funeral Home, Mr. Yu Guochun lay quietly in the flowers, his face serene. The hall of condolences is full of wreaths. The people who came to bid farewell walked gently past him and bowed goodbye. There is no speech, no lamentation, as Mr. Li demanded before his death, everything is simple, only reverence and remembrance of him.

Be sure to fight for the country

On the afternoon of April 6, Yuan Xigang, a professor at Tianjin University and director of the Institute of Chemical Engineering, tied a tie for the last time for the teacher, "Mr. is very low-key, the flashy things do not participate, do not hang names, only indulge in academics, and the topic of each meeting and phone call is only related to three things: the progress of the summary of the theory and method of mass transmission, the preparation of academic seminars, and the growth of future generations of students." In the minds of the students, Yu Guochun is a big tree, rooted in the soil, pointing straight to the sky and shading the earth.

Yu Guochun is still undertaking the Ministry of Education's education reform project at the age of 80, the 85-year-old is still standing to give lectures to undergraduates, the 90-year-old is supervising doctoral research, the 97-year-old is writing theoretical books, and the 100-year-old is still sitting at the desk summarizing and condensing scientific problems in the development of technology.

"The feeling of home and country is a compulsory course for every college student, and Mr. Yu's deeds of fighting for a breath and creating heavy water for the country are the best interpretation of the feelings of home and country, and are the examples around us." When Yuan Xigang entered the school in 1982, he took Yu Guoqun as his example. Yu Guochun's life is a thick book.

In 1922, Yu Guoqun was born in Xiguan, Guangzhou, in 1938, the Japanese invaded Guangzhou, 14 months of indiscriminate bombardment, so that the 16-year-old Yu Guoqun witnessed the homeland from prosperity to devastation, and the pain made him firmly choose the road of scientific salvation.

In 1945, Yu Guochun went to the United States to study, only to seize the day, and won a master's and doctoral degree within two years. In 1947, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and stayed on as a teacher, engaged in chemical thermodynamics and distillation theory research, was accepted as a member of a number of honorary academic organizations in the United States, and was included in the 1950 List of American Scientists. At that time, what was in front of Yu Guochun was an academic road. However, learning to serve the country was the driving force for all his efforts, and upon learning the news of the founding of New China, in August 1950, Yu Guoqun resolutely gave up a comfortable life and avoided the blockade in the name of visiting relatives in Hong Kong and returned to the motherland.

Yuan Xigang talked about Yu Guoqun's past: "Mr. Yu and his mentor, the famous chemical scientist Professor Kur, have a deep affection, Professor Kur gave him the keys to his home and kept him repeatedly, while Mr. Yu only had one sentence - 'My country needs me very much, I can't shirk this responsibility'. ”

"Studying abroad is to return to China after completing your studies and serve the country." Mr. Yu's experience has influenced generations of Tianda students. Gong Jinlong, a professor at the School of Chemical Engineering of Tianjin University, recalled the deeds of Yu Guochun, "Serving the country with science and technology is the mission of the older generation of scientists, and achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement is a compulsory question for our generation of scientific and technological workers." ”

On October 1, 1950, Yu Guochun and dozens of returned scholars were invited to participate in the National Day ceremony. "Mr. Yu always mentioned this experience to the students, 'We were arranged to watch the National Day military parade and parade at the viewing platform on both sides of Tiananmen Square, which is a high honor given by the motherland to returned scholars.'" Every day since then, Mr. Li has worked hard to repay the courtesy of the motherland, with the heart of the 'great man of the country', tackling the country's 'urgent need', and the hundred-year-old is still working to summarize engineering science problems. Ma Xinbin, dean of the School of Chemical Engineering of Tianjin University, admired Yu Guoqun's strategic vision of developing scientific research directions.

In the 1950s, the mainland did not yet master the industrial production technology of heavy water. Yu Guoqun knows the important role of heavy water in cutting-edge technology, and also knows that such core technology cannot be sought, and can only rely on its own research and development. In 1959, Premier Zhou Enlai visited Tianjin University and visited Yu Guochun's laboratory for separating heavy water. He shook Yu Guochun's hand and said, "I heard that you have made great achievements in heavy water research, and I am waiting for your news." Now someone is going to get our necks in the back and not let our reactors work. We must fight for a breath, we can't stop our reactor! ”

In order to "compete for a breath", Yu Guochun led the scientific research team to provide key technologies for extracting heavy water with a purity of 99.9%. For the first time, the "two-tower method" of concentrating heavy water was proposed. As the only heavy water independent production technology in the mainland so far, this technology has been used so far, which has made important contributions to the realization of the complete self-sufficiency of the mainland's heavy water, the start of the new China's nuclear technology and the breakthrough of "two bombs and one satellite".

Strategic scientists who write papers on the ground

In the 1950s, the mainland refining industry was just getting started, and distillation technology was the key to it. More than 90% of industrial raw materials undergo the process of distillation, and their energy consumption accounts for up to 40% to 70% of the total energy consumption of the production process. Yu Guochun keenly discovered the major needs of this industry, began to carry out scientific research in the field of chemical distillation technology, and led students to establish the first large-scale tower experimental device in the teaching and research department. Since then, Yu Guochun has discovered and proposed the major engineering scientific proposition of the integration of distillation process and equipment, and has taken the lead in proposing the theoretical study of fluid mechanics of large-scale distillation towers in the world.

In the 1950s, he was named a second-level professor in his early thirties. In the 1960s, Tianjin University selected eighteen young and promising professors, and he became the famous "Eighteen Arhats" of Tianjin University.

Yu Guochun really managed to write his thesis on the land of the motherland. The team he guided quickly realized the industrialization of distillation technology, created a "one-stop" model for enterprises from research to trial production, and successively transformed or built more than 10,000 industrial distillation towers, which directly led to the progress of distillation separation technology in the petrochemical, light industry, environmental protection and other industries in the mainland. At present, more than 80% of the rectification towers in the petrochemical industry have adopted this new technology; in the field of refining atmospheric decompression distillation, the design problem of the super-large distillation tower in the mainland's 10 million tons of refining has been solved, and the domestic technology market coverage rate has reached 90%; the technology market share in the important field of air product separation has reached more than 80%, completely replacing foreign technology.

Zhao Jinduo, secretary of the Party Committee of the School of Chemical Engineering of Tianjin University, is most grateful for the confidence that Yu Guochun has passed on to young scientific and technological workers. "Mr. Yu always encouraged us, 'After World War II, the chemical industry in the United States developed rapidly, but China still has opportunities in many areas of basic research and should have the confidence to catch up.'" Through his transformed import distillation facilities, the extraction rate of petroleum products in the refining process can be increased by 1 to 2 percentage points, which alone can add tens of millions of yuan of benefits to the enterprise every year. Yu Guochun's deep cultivation in the field of modern rectification technology has not only enabled the mainland chemical separation technology to be upgraded, but also allowed the mainland to step into the ranks of international advanced countries in the field of rectification technology, and he guards the "great country" with the strategic vision of scientists.

Obsessed with the "big tree" of distillation evergreen

What is a first-class university, Yu Guochun's answer is sonorous: China's first-class universities must make important contributions to the construction and development of the country, and only through scientific research results and talent training can they become first-class universities by solving the major needs of the country.

Yu Guochun uses every day's efforts to write life and lead future generations. He believes that innovation should break the shackles of the original theoretical framework and introduce the latest theories and research results combined with other disciplines. In his later years, he opened up a new field of research - chemical computational mass transfer theory, in the development of technology to refine scientific problems, summarize scientific laws, this research fundamentally solves the existing distillation process industrial design of the experience dependence, so that chemical process design from a technology to science. His monograph "Introduction to Chemical Computing mass transmission" received widespread attention from the industry as soon as it was published, became a bestseller in the chemical industry, and was republished in 2017, and Yu Guoqun was revising the third edition for the past two years.

"On days when there are classes, I will get up at 4 a.m. and review the lectures over and over again. Even though this course has been taught for many years and many times, I still have to fully prepare the lesson and strive for excellence, just like the process of distillation and purification. And this solemnity comes from the words and deeds of Mr. Wang. Yuan Xigang still clearly remembers the year when Yu Guochun was 85 years old, and he still insisted on giving classes to undergraduates. A class lasted about 3 hours, and the students were afraid that Yu Guochun's body would not be able to eat, so they moved a chair for him. But Yu Guochun always refused: "I am a teacher, and it is my duty to stand and lecture." "As long as the physical conditions permit, I can talk more about it, so that more young people can understand, support, devote themselves to and love the chemical industry of the motherland, and cultivate more outstanding chemical talents for the motherland."

Yu Guochun is gone, and we remember his great contributions to the new Chinese nuclear industry and the field of distillation technology, and also remember his strong bones for the country. He always said: to do world-class things, to be anonymous and bury celebrities.

Guangming Daily ( 2022-04-10 04 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily