October 26 is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of Academician Li Siguang, the father of Chinese geology.
Li Siguang is a famous geologist, born on October 26, 1889 in Huanggang City, Hubei Province. After the founding of New China, he broke through the numerous obstacles of the Taiwan authorities and returned to the motherland after several months abroad. After 1950, Li Siguang successively served as vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and minister of geology. In the mid-1950s, he also served as Vice-President of the Executive Committee of the World Association of Scientific Workers. In 1955, he was elected as a member of the Faculty of The Chinese Academy of Sciences. On April 29, 1971, Li Siguang died of illness at the age of 82. In 2009, Li Siguang was elected as one of the 100 Chinese who have touched since the founding of New China.
Today, on the occasion of Li Siguang's birth, let us relive the legendary life and home and country feelings of this scientific giant.
Li Siguang
Reject Chiang Kai-shek
As one of the founding members of the China League led by Sun Yat-sen, Li Siguang is also a model of progressive patriotic intellectuals in modern China. After the Wuchang Uprising, he was appointed as a senator of the Hubei Military Government's Finance Department, and later elected as the Minister of Industry. In 1920, Li Siguang was appointed professor and head of the Geology Department of Peking University. In 1928, he became the director of the Institute of Geology of the Academia Sinica, and in 1948 he was elected an academician of the Academia Sinica.
In the early years at Peking University, in order to figure out the distribution of coal mining resources in China, in addition to teaching, Li Siguang continued to study a fossil of a genus of flying for several years. A major breakthrough in geology also began here. After the Start of the Northern Expedition, teaching at Peking University was interrupted. In January 1928, the Nanjing government established the Institute of Geology, with Li Siguang as its director and professor at the Department of Geology of Peking University.
However, due to the war, the geological research institute not only did not have enough materials, but also had to be relocated many times. Li Siguang and others often carried the "Institute of Geology" sign around the road, and it was not until the office building on Jimingsi Road in Nanjing was completed in 1932 that the Institute of Geology finally settled down. In August 1944, Guilin fell, and Li Siguang fled to Chongqing for refuge. Chiang Kai-shek, who was in Chongqing, had always admired Li Siguang, so he invited him to join the Kuomintang and serve as the president of the Central University. But Li Siguang refused: he was engaged in scientific research and would not become a principal.
Rejecting Chiang Kai-shek, Li Siguang took the initiative to give a lecture at Chongqing University, taught by his most proud student, Zhu Sen, and opened China's first petroleum major.
In 1948, as a representative of the Geological Society of China, Li Siguang was invited to participate in the 18th International Geological Society held in London. After that, he began to live abroad.
With the victory of the Civil Liberation War, the Nanjing office of the Central Research Institute of the Kuomintang government ordered its subordinate geological research institute to move rapidly south. When Li Siguang, who was still the director of the institute at that time, received the news, he immediately sent telegrams from abroad and wrote letters to colleagues in the institute to block this action. Thanks to Li Siguang's resistance and the efforts of colleagues in Nanjing of the Institute of Geology, the anti-relocation struggle was victorious. Zhou Enlai praised Li Siguang as a man with backbone and ambition.
In 1962, Li Siguang taught geomechanics in Beijing
Not afraid of coercion, he returned to New China
In early April 1949, Zhou Enlai asked Guo Moruo, who had gone to Prague to attend the World Peace Congress, to write a letter to Li Siguang, asking Him to return to China as soon as possible to participate in the socialist construction of the motherland. Li Siguang was no stranger to Zhou Enlai, they had known each other as early as the War of Resistance Against Japan. The first time we met, I had a sense of trust in Zhou Enlai. He once said to his wife Xu Shubin: "I have the greatest feeling from Mr. Zhou Enlai: with the Communist Party, China has hope!" Therefore, after Li Siguang received this letter, he began to return to China.
In September 1949, at the opening of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference, Zhou Enlai nominated Li Siguang as a member of the Political and Legal Affairs Office and Li Siguang as vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In October, Li Siguang was appointed vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Just as Li Siguang was waiting for the departure date with joy, he received a call from a friend. The friend told him that the Kuomintang Foreign Ministry had secretly ordered its ambassador to Britain to ask Li Siguang to make a public statement rejecting the post offered by New China. Otherwise, Li Siguang will be detained and sent to Taiwan. Forced by this situation, Li Siguang had to secretly leave England with his wife and return to China. Before leaving, he wrote a letter to zheng tianxi, the Kuomintang ambassador to Britain, saying that he would never do what they demanded, and advised him to see the situation clearly and not to help the Kuomintang government do bad things again.
After the news of Li Siguang's departure from London reached China, Zhou Enlai was extremely concerned about the safety of Li Siguang's journey. On November 15, he called Wu Wentao, then the Prague bureau chief of the Xinhua News Agency, and others, asking for arrangements to protect Li Siguang and return to China. The cable said: "Mr. Li Siguang, oppressed by the reactionary government, has secretly left The United Kingdom for Eastern Europe and is preparing to return to China. He first negotiated with the Czech authorities to facilitate Li Siguang's entry and protect him. ”
Because Li Siguang detoured through several countries and took a freighter to Hong Kong, he did not get news of Li Siguang for a while. Some people rumored that Li Siguang had not returned and had gone to Taiwan. Zhou Enlai said: I believe that he will not go to Taiwan, and if he has not returned now, he must have delayed some difficulties, and instructed that the first national geological conference after liberation must wait for Li Siguang to return.
In June 1950, Li Siguang finally returned to Chinese mainland. Zhou Enlai came to visit, and his first words were" "You are finally back!" Welcome, welcome! The motherland needs you. ”
Break the "China's oil-poor theory" thesis
For a long time, Chinese and foreign geologists have agreed that "China is poor in oil", because the formations of the large oil fields that have been discovered in the world at that time are marine formations, so it is believed that only marine formations have the conditions for oil production. Most of China's strata are continental strata, so it is concluded that China is an oil-poor country. Li Siguang disagreed with this view, and after long-term research and investigation, he believed that whether it was a marine formation or a continental formation, as long as the conditions for oil production and the geological structure of oil storage were available, large oil fields could be found.
Li Siguang made a bold speculation from his years of field investigations: the geological structure of the Songliao Plain in Northeast China and the North China Plain is similar to that of the Asiatic Plain, and both are geological structures of the sedimentation zone. The Asiatic Plain contains a lot of oil, and the Songliao Plain and the North China Plain should also contain a lot of oil.
In 1953, China began to implement the first "Five-Year Plan", but the "industrial blood" - oil is very scarce. In 1954, Li Siguang pointed out in the report "China's Petroleum Exploration Prospects from the Perspective of Land Structure" that the Qaidam Basin, Sichuan Basin, North China Plain, Northeast Plain and other places are the most likely areas to contain oil. In January 1955, the 66-year-old Li Siguang led an expedition to the Songliao Plain in the northeast in the middle of winter for geological exploration. However, the northeast is sparsely populated, the natural conditions are complex, and after 3 years, the long exploration has not made substantial progress.
The all-night study and the investigation day and night made Li Siguang suffer from kidney disease, and the central government decided to temporarily let him go to Hangzhou for recuperation.
Just the night before Li Siguang left, the central authorities suddenly received a report from the oil exploration front, and some comrades of the exploration team were ready to pull the census team to other provinces, while other members still firmly believed in Li Siguang's inference and insisted on sticking to the northeast plain.
Li Siguang immediately pushed aside his plan to go to Hangzhou and returned to his exploration team. The long-term stationing of this team has led to more and more local cadres and young people to join, and The vast northeast land has formed China's first oil exploration vanguard.
In June 1958, the large-scale and high-yield Daqing Oilfield was discovered. In response, the Ministry of Geology immediately took action, and they moved their troops to the alluvial plains of the Bohai Bay and the lower reaches of the Yellow River, after which the Dagang Oilfield, Shengli Oilfield and other oilfields were built one after another, and then the Geology Department moved to other plains, basins and shallow seas to continue the operation.
Under the specific leadership of Li Siguang, China's geological work has made great achievements, thus breaking the conclusion that "China is poor in oil"! On September 26, 1959, with the efforts of the petroleum department and daqing workers represented by Wang Jinxi, the oil production of Daqing Oilfield created history, and the hat of "China's poor oil" was taken off.
Join the Communist Party, calling himself "like a newborn baby"
For a long time, Li Siguang did not apply to the party organization because he thought that the conditions were not enough. It was not until 1957 that he formally proposed to join the party.
Earlier, when Zhou Enlai mentioned to Li Siguang why he had not applied to the organization for joining the party for so many years, Li Siguang said: In the old society, I lacked consciousness and did not devote myself to the revolutionary ranks, and I was deeply ashamed; although I made some efforts to build the country after the success of the revolution, I was still far from the standard of a Communist Party member; moreover, I was old and in poor health, and I could not necessarily play the vanguard role of a Communist Party member when I joined the Party.
However, Zhou Enlai held that in carrying out socialist construction now, it is very necessary for intellectuals to work for the party. Li Siguang could consider and talk about his ideas with the responsible comrades of the party group of the Ministry of Geology and the party group of the Academy of Sciences. This conversation made Li Siguang reassure him. Soon after, he applied to the party organization to join the party.
In the second half of 1958, He Changgong, secretary of the party leading group of the Ministry of Geology, and Zhang Jinfu, secretary of the party leading group of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, unanimously held that Li Siguang actively demanded progress, had already met the basic conditions for a Communist Party member, and was willing to be his introducer to the party. On October 18, Li Siguang began filling out the volunteer form for joining the party. On December 22, the first branch of the General Office of the Ministry of Geology of the Communist Party of China held a branch meeting to discuss Li Siguang's joining the party. On the 29th, Li Siguang was approved as a reserve member of the Communist Party of China.
At that time, Li Siguang, who was already in his twilight years, said that he was "like a newborn baby, and a new beginning in life has only begun" for becoming a Communist Party member. After that, he devoted himself with more vigorous energy to the upsurge of socialist construction.
On April 29, 1971, when Li Siguang passed away, people found a note at the head of his bed: "In a great socialist country like ours, we Chinese the people have the ambition and strength to overcome all scientific and technological difficulties, to open this incomparably huge heat reservoir and make it available to the people." ”
Zhou Enlai gave him a high evaluation, calling him "a banner of the scientific community." Qian Xuesen, the "father of China's missiles," also commented on Li Siguang: "Although the road that Li Siguang has traveled in the old society has been somewhat tortuous and bumpy, the direction of his life's efforts and the height he has finally reached, as well as the contributions he has made to the motherland and the people, are indeed a banner in the contemporary Chinese scientific and technological circles and intellectual circles, and they are worthy of this high appraisal given by the party and the people." ”
Editor: Zhou Xiaoyu