For every college student, a thick textbook is enough to serve as a symbol of the memory of the entire university.
It could be a textbook that you've been thinking about repeatedly after hanging up the subject, or it could be a textbook that's too thick to be daunting.
For many students of organic chemistry, Basic Organic Chemistry is such a textbook that can serve as proof of identity.
From 1980 to the present, Basic Organic Chemistry has accompanied China's organic chemistry education for 37 years.
This book has long been the common memory of several generations, and everyone affectionately calls it "Xing Daben", which is a tribute to the original writer, Mr. Xing Qiyi.
Now that the book has been written to the fourth edition, the "Xing Daben" has been increased without increasing the price, and it has become the "Pei Juben" (led by another author).
Although Mr. Xing Qiyi passed away when the third edition was published, we can still feel the story and inheritance implicit in this book.
In 1911, Xing Qiyi was born in a scholarly mansion in the city of Tianjin.
His father was a Hanlin in the late Qing Dynasty, which was a position that needed to be selected through the township examination, the meeting examination, and the temple examination, and only excellent soldiers could enter the Hanlin Academy.
His father relied on knowledge to change his fate, and naturally never skipped the knowledge education of Xing Qiyi.
He went to private school every day, and after school, he still loved the history books and read them tirelessly.
Group portrait of Hanlin in the late Qing Dynasty
When it came time to choose the direction of college, everyone thought that Xing Qiyi would continue to go deeper into history.
But he preferred to be a helpful person to his homeland at the time, and after careful consideration, he chose the chemistry department of Fu Jen University.
After graduation, he also applied to study in the United States, studied for a doctorate at the University of Illinois, and received a doctorate.
He then went on to Germany, a scientific powerhouse at the time, where he studied toad toxins under the famous organic chemist H. Wieland.
Xing Qiyi, Fu Jen University graduate photo
Xing Qiyi's path to study is very smooth, working in the famous Wieland laboratory at a young age, which is the academic path that many people dream of?
But he was not happy, and his heart was always with China, which was thousands of miles away.
Not long after, the muzzle of the Japanese invaders was already facing the sick and weak dragon of the East, and a great crisis had quietly befallen.
Xing Qiyi has always been concerned about the motherland, and after learning about these things, he resolutely decided to give up his superior scientific research conditions to return to China and use his knowledge to serve the country.
Xing Qiyi in the experiment, the foreign scientific research environment at that time was not too good
In the early days of returning to China, the scientific research conditions he could get were very bad, but the world was only afraid of people with hearts.
He himself believes that the most successful scientific research he has done was the determination of the bark content of cinchona in the Yunnan estuary under extremely difficult circumstances during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
At that time, Xing Qiyi returned to China, and in order to support the War of Resistance, he and his team members searched for antimalarial drugs.
At that time, the scientific research environment was extremely difficult, and they tried their best to collect cinchona bark in the border estuary area of Yunnan.
Cinchona tree
Cinchona trees are also known as quinine trees, and their bark and root bark are important industrial raw materials for extracting quinine and quinidine.
Quinine can treat Plasmodium falciparum and is included in the World Health Organization's Standard List of Essential Medicines.
To test the quinine content of this batch of cinchona trees, the team needed a suitable laboratory.
But in the war years, it was important to eat enough and sleep well, where was there such a complete laboratory?
In order to complete the test, Xing Qiyi tried his best to put together enough experimental equipment, pots and pans to do everything, which successfully completed the composition analysis and research, adding a guarantee to the lives of soldiers on the front line.
Photos of the New Fourth Army
The war became more and more cruel, and it was no longer possible to satisfy Xing Qiyi's pure heart by serving the country with knowledge in the rear area.
Risking his life, he crossed the enemy blockade line to Tianchang County, the northern liberated area, and joined the New Fourth Army.
He was behind the soldiers who fought in blood, pharmacizing for them and cultivating pharmaceutical talents.
Later, in order to facilitate the care of his family, he took over his wife's money and two children.
The two children grew up under the care of the warriors, and he and his wife produced countless life-saving potions for the army.
Xing Qiyi is probably the only academician in China's chemical circles who has hooked up with the New Fourth Army.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Xing Qiyi returned from the front line and came to Peking University as a professor in the Department of Agrochemistry and the Department of Chemistry.
At that time, the school's research conditions did not improve, and he only got the Beiping Research Institute to go part-time and use the laboratory there to conduct research.
He actively responded to the call of the state to develop science and technology, and did everything possible to carry out scientific research on organic chemistry.
He conducted a study called Michael's Addition Response*.
At that time, there were only a few bottles of acrylonitrile required for the experiment, and in order to make rational use of these bottles of acrylonitrile, each of his experiments needed to be repeatedly confirmed and prepared.
Eventually, he synthesized a series of spiral compounds such as substituted lactam, β-5, 5-di substituted lactam, many of which also have good pharmacological effects.
Later, the Japanese chemist Sato also published a paper with similar results, but that was 7 years later.
*Note: The Michael addition reaction uses different nucleophilic reagents in organic synthesis, which can easily generate carbon-carbon bonds, carbon-oxygen bonds, carbon-nitrogen bonds, carbon-sulfur bonds, carbon-selenium bonds, etc. It is a classic reaction in organic chemistry.
The synthetic bovine insulin is another milestone in Xing Qiyi's scientific research path.
In 1921, MacLeod successfully extracted insulin for the first time and applied it to clinical treatment, becoming the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1923.
In 1955, Sanger first elucidated the amino acid sequence of insulin molecules, which also won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
And after these 4 years, China, where science has just flourished, also has a group of scientists involved in the work of artificial synthesis of insulin.
Vials of insulin
Xing Qiyi joined this scientific research team for the first time, he repeatedly provided ideas for some technical difficulties in the process of experimentation, and for up to 6 years, they always came out early and returned late.
In the fall of 1965, when synthetic protein crystalline insulin was first born, everyone was so excited that they could not speak.
The success of this nobel prize nomination level proves that Chinese scientists have entered the world's leading ranks in the field of protein and peptide chemical synthesis.
In 1963, Xing Qiyi was directing the study of insulin synthesis
There was also an interesting story around the synthetic bovine insulin.
In September 1978, Yang Zhenning was nominated for a Nobel Prize, and he immediately thought of the results of synthetic bovine insulin.
During the same period, the Chinese Academy of Sciences also received a letter from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, hoping that the Chinese side would recommend a Nobel Prize candidate for chemistry.
For this matter, Qian Sanqiang specially presided over the selection meeting and selected a representative among many scientific researchers.
Finally, the 1979 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to workers who synthesized the organic synthesis of boron compounds, but synthetic bovine insulin was still unsuccessful.
Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning (right)
Originally, things in the scientific community generally ended here, but a group of netizens showed a strange brain circuit.
They fabricated many versions, mostly based on political factors as the main reason, such as the feeling that capitalist awards could not be demanded; collective society must collectively receive awards, and 100 people up and down the institute received awards; capitalist suppression of China; and so on.
These fallacious but well-known versions make people who know the truth cry and laugh.
Can you find it? On the edge of the penultimate row
With the improvement of the scientific research environment, Xing Qiyi has also made many other scientific research results.
He devised a method that was more convenient and suitable for large-scale production of chloramphenicol, and although it could not be carried out due to economic factors, he was awarded the 1978 National Science Congress Award.
He is also very concerned about many animal medicinal materials in traditional Chinese medicine materials, and he uses chemical methods to study the polypeptide components of the medicinal materials and clarify their pharmacology.
The study of China's endemic natural products is also his main scientific research work, he has organized research on the aroma components of flowers and fruits, and many of the results have been applied to the spice industry.
Xing Qiyi in class
Xing Qiyi is not only an excellent organic chemist, but also a well-known educator.
He once said that the biggest regret after the founding of the People's Republic of China is that there is only more than 5 years of time to engage in scientific research, and the rest of the time is basically spent on teaching.
His students were all over the country, and everyone wanted to come to his class to listen to a section whenever they had the chance.
Many of these students, who studied under his guidance, or many of whom he had only one side, became experts in their respective fields.
His greatest focus is not on imparting knowledge, but on "sensitizing" students so that they themselves want to explore chemistry in depth.
He always quoted from the sidelines, explained a problem thoroughly, and left an intriguing question.
"Organic Chemistry" Xing Qiyi
But what really makes him remembered by so many students he has never met is the textbooks written by him.
In the 1950s, he wrote "Organic Chemistry" as the first organic chemistry textbook written by himself in China.
Subsequently, Xing Qiyi organized the compilation of the first edition of "Basic Organic Chemistry", and the excellent features of this book are rich in content and novel materials.
Liu Ping (left), Academician Xing Qiyi (middle) and his wife Professor Qian Cunrou (right)
Xing Qiyi completed the preparation of the first two editions of this excellent textbook, but unfortunately could not see the third edition released.
"Basic Organic Chemistry" has now been published in its fourth edition, and the compilation work has not been involved in the compilation of Mr. Xing Lao.
Every line in the book must be familiar to him, because all his spirit and desires are implicit in the book.
In 2000, Xing Qiyi and his granddaughter Xing Qiyi were photographed
If you are careful, you will find that in each version of the "Xing Daben", the first name in the edit column is "Xing Qiyi".
This may imply everyone's remembrance: Xing Daben will always be Xing Daben.
*References
QIU Minghua. Remembering Mr. Xing Qiyi[J]. University Chemistry,2011,26(05):6-7.]
Dai Qianyuan,Hua Wenting. Xing Qiyi[J]. Chemical Education,1998,(01):42-45.]
agile. Crossing a New Height in Life—— Interview with Xing Qiyi, Famous Organic Chemist and Educator[J]. Science and Technology and Economic Pictorial,1997,(05):8.