The Paper reporter learned from the relevant departments of the China Meteorological Administration that Professor Zhang Yan, a famous meteorologist and the first generation of weather forecasters in New China, passed away on March 4, 2024, at the age of 100.
The pictures in this article are all source: the official account "Southwest Associated University Museum"
According to public information, Zhang Yan, female, born in 1925, is a native of Shangyu (formerly Shaoxing County), Zhejiang, and a famous meteorologist. In 1942, he entered the Department of Geology, Geography and Meteorology of Southwest Associated University to study meteorology, and graduated from the Department of Meteorology of Tsinghua University in 1947.
She was a professor of the Graduate School of Beijing Institute of Meteorology, director of the Academic Committee of the Institute, member of the National Committee of the China Association for Science and Technology, member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Association for Science and Technology, executive director of the Chinese Meteorological Society and director of the Weather Professional Committee, director of the Chinese Hydraulic Society and the first and second directors of the Hydrometeorology Committee, chairman of the 13th to 15th Beijing Meteorological Society, vice president of the first session of the Beijing Disaster Reduction Association, expert on flood control of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, member of the Mesoscale (Fine) Meteorology Committee of the International Dynamic Meteorological Society, He is a member of the World Bank-aided Reservoir Safety Committee, a deputy to the 8th, 9th and 10th Beijing Municipal People's Congress, and a weather forecaster for the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China.
Zhang Yan was born in a scholarly family, and his grandfather was a private school teacher. His parents were activists during the May Fourth Movement, and his father Zhang Tingqian was a good friend of Lu Xun, who founded the weekly "Silk Language" with Lu Xun and others in 1924, and became the main writer of "Silk Language" under the pen name "Kawashima".
Zhang Yan (back row, center) with his family
Mother Sun Feijun and Shi Pingmei were classmates and friends when they were studying at a female high school, and they also performed "Peacock Flying Southeast" together.
On January 26, 1925, the little girl of the Zhang family fell to the ground, and his father Zhang Tingqian happily wrote "The Birth of a Small Animal": "The branches are blooming with yellow flowers, saying that this name is called Yingchun, people set off firecrackers, saying that they are welcoming the gods, and the east is showing white light and saying, it is said that this is the sunrise, and at this time, this small animal was born." This article published in "Yuxi" has been cherished by Zhang Yan.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University were ordered by the Ministry of Education to move south to Changsha to form the National Changsha Provisional University. Soon after the opening of Changsha University, Nanjing fell, Wuhan was shaken, and the war was about to spread to Changsha. After Changsha Linda moved to Yunnan, it was renamed National Southwest Associated University. Zhang Yan's mother and her four young children traveled from Tianjin and Hong Kong to Haiphong, Vietnam, where they joined Zhang Dinh Thien, and then transferred to Kunming via Hanoi on the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway.
Zhang Yan finished her third year of junior high school and high school at Nanjing Middle School in Kunming, and wanted to choose a literature major when she applied for university, but a copy of "The Biography of Marie Curie" changed her parents and her mind. So, with the determination of science to save the country, Zhang Yan was admitted to the Department of Physics of Southwest Associated University in 1942. There were only two female students admitted to the Department of Physics of the United Nations University that year, and Zhang Yan was one of them. This year, she was only 17 years old.
Since 1939, Kunming has been bombed by Japanese planes, and running the alarm has become a "common thing" for people. Fog and rain became the best umbrella for learning, and it was difficult for planes to determine targets, and the bombing would stop temporarily, so Zhang Yan became interested in weather forecasting. At that time, the university decided to select several students to study meteorology, and Zhang Yan took the initiative to sign up and transfer to the Department of Meteorology, becoming the first female student in the Department of Meteorology of the United Nations University. Since then, she has formed an indissoluble bond with the meteorological career that she has loved and pursued all her life.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Southwest Associated University also ended its mission of running the school, and Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University, which formed the United Nations University, decided to return to the north and resume the school. On May 4, 1946, the school announced the successful end of its operation, and the teachers and students of the three schools were demobilized and returned to the north, and the students were transferred to each school according to their respective majors. Zhang Yan returned to Tsinghua University with the university and graduated from the Department of Meteorology in 1947. Just as she was planning to stay at the school to teach, she suddenly received an assignment notice asking her to take up a job at the North China Meteorological Bureau as soon as possible. After the liberation of Beiping in 1949, the North China Observatory was taken over by the Communication Section of the North China Aviation Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Zhang Yan became a weather forecaster in New China.
Zhang Yan was interviewed by the Museum of Southwest Associated University
It is worth mentioning that in 1949, 24-year-old Zhang Yan received the task of weather forecasting for the founding ceremony. This is an important task, and there is no room for a spread pool. Weather forecasts require accurate cloud and fog forecasts to ensure that the aircraft can fly smoothly on the day of the parade. Zhang Yan recalled that she and her colleagues rummaged around to find forecasts around Beijing, but "a lot of useful information was burned when the Japanese left, and only a big broken wooden box with some broken drawings remained." In the end, they relied on strengthening liaison with the Air Force Meteorological Observatory to update meteorological information, and at the same time collecting data in the Department of Meteorology of Tsinghua University, scientifically analyzing the data, calculating the probability of rainfall, and working overtime late at night became commonplace.
On September 30, after ensuring that nothing went wrong, Zhang Yan, as the forecaster on duty, solemnly signed his name on the forecast weather map for the next day.
Zhang Yan later completed the meteorological support service for nearly ten National Day military parades, and witnessed and participated in the rise of scientific development in New China in the following decades. With a serious and rigorous attitude, she devoted herself to the study of rainstorm and hydrology, and her life has won numerous awards and rich research results.
Zhang Yan has been engaged in the teaching and scientific research of rainstorm theory and application development for a long time, mainly committed to the research and practice of quantitative and refined precipitation mechanism and forecasting, and is one of the founders and pioneers of the interdisciplinary discipline of hydrometeorology in New China. He has conducted a series of studies on heavy rainfall, plum rain in China and its relationship with mainland flood and drought disasters and the South-to-North Water Diversion, and has made outstanding contributions to the field of rainstorm forecasting, hydrometeorology and disaster mitigation in the field of global difficult rainstorms.
Zhang Yan's husband Zhu Shangqing is also a graduate of the Department of Geology of Southwest Associated University, and the husband and wife study meteorology and geology. This kind of work allows them to spend less time with their families and more time away from them. In the more than ten years of rainstorm research, because he often had to go deep into the front line to study heavy rains and floods, Zhang Yan was always stationed wherever there was heavy rain, constantly following the footsteps of heavy rains, and walking into the front line of disaster areas again and again.
Source: The Paper
Process Editor: U022