Academician Tong Di Zhou: Willing to emulate the scalper and sacrifice his life for the country

Tribute to the memory of the biologist Academician Tong Di Zhou

One hundred and fifty-one of "Kehai Chasing Stars"

The multiplication of all things is transmitted by code, and the cytonuclease release is related. Embryo breeding reveals polarity, and the foundation cloning casts first.

Fish eggs are dissected, nucleic acids are injected, and mutations are induced for more than a thousand years. A lifetime of wisdom melted into China, and he entered the galaxy to reflect the blue sky.

(Partridge Sky – Zhang Biao)

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Academician Tong Di Zhou (May 28, 1902 to March 30, 1979). He is a biologist, educator, the main founder of experimental embryology in China, and the founder of marine scientific research in China. He revealed the polar phenomenon of embryonic development; made great achievements in the study of nuclear mass relations; completed the nuclear transfer study of fish for the first time in 1963, laying the foundation for the completion of interspecific cloning of fish and the cloning of adult crucian carp somatic cells in China, pioneering Chinese cloning technology, and known as the "father of Chinese cloning".

Tong Dizhou and his wife Ye Yufen are known as the "Curie couple" in the Chinese biological community. Ye Yufen's scientific research achievements and seniority level should be rated as a professor, because Tong Di was also the leader of the institute, and Ye Yufen's promotion title was denied by him, and the quota was given to others. Therefore, Ye Yufen was an associate professor until his death.

Tong Di Zhou collaborated with Chinese-American scientist Niu Manjiang to show that information ribonucleic acid in carp can induce the double tail of goldfish tail fins to become single tails. Later, Tong Di Zhou used a more distantly related species to conduct similar experiments, which were successful. The international biological community named this fish "baby fish".

On March 6, 1979, Tong Dizhou had a heart attack while giving a report to more than 2,000 scientific and technological personnel in Zhejiang Province at the Zhejiang Science Conference in Hangzhou, fainted on the podium, and died more than 20 days later.