"At my age, I'm in a race against time. ”
This "post-80s chasing boy" riding a bicycle, he is an old naughty boy of science popularization and a new Internet celebrity scientist. He is committed to disseminating scientific knowledge about the ocean to the public in simple language, and has also dived to a depth of more than 1,400 meters three times at the age of 82 to explore the secrets of the ocean with endless curiosity. He is a lifelong Xi and continues to leap to new heights even after the age of 60.
He is Wang Pinxian, an 87-year-old academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences at Tongji University.
Come, let's review the life of this old gentleman who jumped out of the shackles of age -
In 1936, Wang Pinxian was born in an ordinary family on Nanjing Road in Shanghai. In the early 50s of the 20th century, when he was studying at Shanghai Gezhi Middle School, Wang Pinxian became interested in geography, geology and the ocean early due to the inspiration of Chen Ershou, the then principal and geographer.
After graduating from high school, he went to Moscow University to study paleontology at the Faculty of Geology, Xi and was assigned to East China Normal University after returning to China.
At that time, East China Normal University was preparing to establish a department of marine geology, and there was not even a sampan boat, so there was no way to talk about marine scientific research.
Then during the "Cultural Revolution", Wang Pin was first sent to Malu Commune to participate in labor. He was very depressed for a while.
But fortunately, the turnaround was not long in coming.
In 1970, with the approval of the State Council, the preparatory group for the "62722 Project" in Shanghai was established, with the task of preparing for offshore oil drilling. In response to the central government's call for cultivating marine geology talents, Wang Pinxian and his colleagues suggested that East China Normal University recruit students who "study Xi marine geology", which was approved. In the same year, East China Normal University established a major in marine geology, and more than a dozen workers, peasants and soldiers enrolled in the school, becoming the first batch of freshmen.
In 1972, the teachers and students of this "Marine Geology Company" drove from East China Normal University to Tongji University. Three years later, the Department of Marine Geology and Geophysics of Tongji University was officially established.
Wang Pinxian's work at that time was in an abandoned workshop where mosquitoes and flies were flying, soaking the seabed sediments sent by the Yellow Sea for exploration, washing them with tap water, and placing them under a microscope that was difficult to focus on to observe the fossils. Thus began the first step towards the "march" to marine science.
But the development and changes of the times are amazing, and in the torrent of reform and opening up, everything is different.
In 1978, Wang Pinxian was invited by the Petroleum Science Delegation to visit the United States and France for two months, becoming the first person from Tongji University to visit the West after the reform and opening up. During his visit to the United States, Wang Pin first got acquainted with the well-known American marine scientist Lo Brik and learned about the concept of "searching for oil in the deep sea" from his mouth. He soon realized that this was "the cutting edge of deep-sea research."
In 1981, Wang Pinxian won the Humboldt Scholarship in Germany and went to Germany at the age of 45 to conduct one-year research at Kiel University. Here, Wang Pin first touched the frontier of international marine science and was shocked.
After returning to China in 1982, Wang Pinxian officially presided over the Department of Marine Geology of Tongji University. In order to improve the overall level of the teaching corps, he left only one excellent teacher and took away all the teachers of workers, peasants and soldiers, which caused an uproar at the time. He almost lost his job, but he still didn't give up his research.
In 1985, the Department of Marine Geology of Tongji University became the only doctoral program in marine geology among domestic universities at that time. It was also in that year that Wang Pinxian's "Chinese Marine Micropaleontology" was jointly published in Germany and China, and the French magazine commented: "China's marine research has risen." ”
In 1991, Wang Pinxian was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 1992, the year after Wang Pinxian was elected as an academician, he returned to Germany, where he had been a visiting scholar, and did only one thing: to persuade Germany and China to cooperate in the exploration of the deep sea. This was the origin of the 95th voyage of the Sino-German joint research vessel "Sun" in 1994, and also laid the foundation for the 184th voyage of Ocean Drilling (ODP) in the South China Sea in 1999.
In 1999, 62-year-old Wang Pinxian, as chief scientist, presided over the first Chinese-led ocean drilling in the South China Sea, achieving a breakthrough of zero ocean drilling in China's waters.
For Wang Pinxian, the real academic youth has just begun: on the best ship in the world, the world's most capable marine scientists stay together every day, and only science communicates.
In 2010, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) established a major research project on the evolution of deep processes in the South China Sea, which was launched in 2011 and ended in 2018, with a total investment of more than 500 million yuan. The program aims to use a range of new technologies to probe ocean basins and reveal how the South China Sea is evolving. Wang Pin is the initiator of this plan, and is also the person in charge and the leader of the expert group.
In 2017, at the age of 81, he initiated and approved a large project with a total of more than 2 billion yuan, the submarine observation network;
In the spring of that year when he was 82 years old, Wang Pin first took the "Deep Sea Warrior" manned submersible to the depths of the South China Sea to conduct scientific research, and completed three deep dives in nine days, reaching a maximum depth of 1,400 meters.
As a result, he also became the oldest deep diver in the world and was known as the "Fellow of Deep Divers". Wang Pinxian finally saw the deep sea that he had studied all his life, which made China's marine research proud in the world.
In 2020, he began to open a main account on the short video platform, and he knew that "one-click triple connection", from time to time "play memes", "sell cute" and "ask for attention".
He is happy to get more people interested in the ocean.
Through this new form to introduce the deep sea world to everyone, with rich and interesting knowledge and popular science, it has been loved by many young netizens, and has become an up master with more than one million fans in less than half a year.
He was also called "the old naughty boy of marine science popularization" by netizens.
Many scientists, and even academicians, are rarely willing to face the public, let alone the media. But Wang Pinxian is an exception, he is willing to express his own opinions, willing to cause controversy and resonance. In fact, he doesn't want to become an "Internet celebrity", but just hopes to tell the public about the first-line scientific research results in popular language, and through his own "hammer", for the development of China's scientific research, break some ideological and conceptual shackles, correct some fallacies, so that latecomers on the road of pioneering and innovation can have fewer obstacles.
Science should not be an ivory tower of self-amusement, but should go out of the study and influence every heart that thirsts for knowledge. In a sense, Wang Pin first used his experience to write the scientific version of "The Old Man and the Sea" - people can fail, but they cannot be defeated.
On September 15, 2021, Wang Pinxian and his wife Sun Xiangjun jointly donated 2 million yuan of their savings for many years to set up the "Tongji University Marine Scholarship" under the Tongji University Education Development Foundation, and specifically advised not to name the award after them. In addition, when the new crown pneumonia epidemic broke out in 2020, Academician Wang and his wife were concerned about the front line of the anti-epidemic and donated 100,000 yuan to help win the battle against the epidemic as soon as possible.
In the Touching Chinese Character Awards on March 4, 2023, the collective award went to 13 "Silver Hair Broadcasters". Wang Pin was one of them.
On December 15, 2023, at the 2023 "Influential Person of the Year" honor ceremony of China News Weekly, Wang Pinxian was awarded the "Education Person of the Year".
Wang Pinxian is now 87 years old, and this old man is still setting new goals for himself. Wang Lao often joked: "Others are postdoctoral fellows, but I am an academician, and the results I can get my hands on now are all completed after the age of 60." I think now that I can really throw off my arms and do it for more than ten years. ”
He burned his life, devoted himself to exploration, whether it was scientific research or popular science, everything he did was for the day when China's deep-sea science could be among the top in the world.
Such a constantly innovative, advancing with the times, and a lovely and respectable "post-80s" academician is not only in the "cloud" but also by his side. Science is always young, love will never be reduced, like Wang Pinxian, these "science superstars", their firm belief and continuous innovation inspire more young people to understand science, fall in love with scientific knowledge, scientific methods, scientific ideas, and scientific spirit, which will spread to the broader land of the motherland!
After all, the heart of a child never grows old.