He created a number of "firsts" in China's foundry industry: the first academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China's foundry discipline, led the establishment of the first state key laboratory in the field of casting, the author of the first Chinese official paper of the International Foundry Conference, and trained the first doctor of foundry in New China...
He is Zhou Yaohe, the pioneer and founder of China's solidification science and technology, and an internationally renowned physical metallurgist and educator. He has long been committed to the research of solidification theory and technology, the original new insulation riser and pressure regulation precision casting technology, which has had a profound impact on the progress of China's casting technology; pioneered and led the development of intensive green casting in China, invented metal melt purification technology and high-performance aluminum matrix composite materials to solve the major national urgent needs, and made great contributions to China's scientific and technological undertakings, industry and national economic development.
Zhou Yaohe
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" > study in the Soviet Union, the first appearance</h1>
Zhou Yaohe was born in Beijing in 1927. In 1946, he was admitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Tsinghua University. At that time, Tsinghua University brought together well-known professors such as Qian Weichang and Zhang Wei, celebrities gathered, intense study and surging patriotic student movement, which constituted Zhou Yao and unforgettable four years of university life.
In 1950, after graduation, Zhou Yaohe went to Tianjin Nankai University to teach. In 1951, at the suggestion of Meng Guangzhe, then head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, he took the selection examination for graduate students studying in the Soviet Union. In the spring of the following year, Zhou Yaohe received an acceptance letter and went to the Preparatory Department of the Beijing Russian Language College to study Russian.
On May 9, 1953, Zhou Yaohe joined the Communist Party of China. In October of the same year, he entered the Moscow Iron and Steel Institute and became a graduate student in the Foundry Department of metallurgy.
During this period, with the perseverance of studying more than 16 hours a day, in addition to completing the graduate courses, he also audited and self-taught the professional courses of undergraduates, and used several vacations to intern in different types of factories.
In 1954, Zhou Yaohe took a solo photo in Moscow's Gorky Park
Under the recommendation of his mentor Professor Fan talov, Zhou Yaohe entered the Central Institute of Technology and Machinery Manufacturing of the former Soviet Union to participate in research work, becoming the first Chinese to work in the institute. In addition to working at the Institute, he often went to Lenin's library to consult literature, ate a simple loaf of bread and a cup of coffee at noon, and continued to study until the library closed.
When preparing his graduation thesis, Zhou Yaohe took solidification theory and solidification technology as his research direction. In order to deeply investigate the associated phenomena of the casting solidification process, he has developed 3 sets of experimental devices, of which the "mold surface high temperature strength test method and device" won the invention patent created by the former Soviet Union. In addition, he successfully revealed the mechanism of hot cracking of castings and put forward unique insights on the concessionality of molding materials, which was also included in the textbooks of Soviet universities.
In 1957, Zhou Yaohe completed his dissertation "Research on the Thermal Cracking of Steel Castings", and successfully ended his study abroad career through defense. Mentors and colleagues suggested that he continue to work in the Soviet Union, but Zhou Yao and zhou Yao, anxious to serve the motherland, refused one by one.
In 1957, Soviet professors sent zhou Yaohe (left) a photo at a train station
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="71" > devoted himself to education and governed by "strictness, repetition, and innovation"</h1>
After returning to China after completing his studies, Zhou Yaohe was assigned to Northwestern Polytechnical University and participated in the formation of the casting major. Under his presidency, the school built a laboratory first, laying the necessary foundation for improving the quality of teaching and carrying out scientific research.
After 5 years of hard work, Zhou Yaohe and others built the most advanced casting laboratory in China at Northwestern Polytechnical University at that time. In 1981, the laboratory obtained the right to award the first batch of doctoral degrees in casting in China.
Zhou Yaohe attaches great importance to education, and he believes: "Even if a person's IQ is high, his role is limited. In order to prosper for a long time, it is more important and meaningful to bring out a good discipline echelon than to write a few more papers and produce more results. ”
Over the decades, he has completed the teaching tasks of many undergraduate and graduate students, and he has set himself a requirement: no matter how many times the course is taught, he must rewrite the lecture and add new scientific and technological achievements in time.
He also attaches great importance to cultivating students' scientific research ability, often teaching them, "The pursuit of scientific research should be like a child eating candy, eating one in his mouth, holding one in his hand, and staring at the third with his eyes, and never having a time to be satisfied."
Zhou Yaohe published the article "Three Points of Experience in Guiding Graduate Students"
"Strictness, heavy guidance, and innovation" is Zhou Yaohe's understanding of governance. In addition to cultivating a strict study style, in order to ensure the quality of graduate students, in the stage of students making papers, it is also necessary to strictly control the "three passes", that is, the opening of the topic, the stage inspection and thesis review.
"Redirection" means to focus on bootstrapping. The tutor takes the students not to let go, nor to do everything for the students, but to allocate students at key times, focusing on cultivating students' ability to obtain new knowledge, apply knowledge, create ability and overcome difficulties.
"Seeking innovation" means to forge ahead in order to make new, requiring teachers and students to always aim at the frontier scientific research direction in research work, put forward new methods, new ideas, and solve new problems.
Professor Jie Wanqi, a student of Zhou Yaohe, recalled that during his master's and doctoral studies, the major research direction was determined by his supervisor Zhou Yaohe, and the specific details were solved by himself. When I consulted my mentor when I encountered difficulties, I found that he was prepared for his difficulties. After graduation, Jie Wanqi stayed in Zhou Yaohe's research group and began to look for his own research direction. He planned to use the principle of solidification to study functional crystalline materials, an idea encouraged and supported by Zhou Yaohe.
In his work, Zhou Yaohe often used each person's strengths according to his own characteristics, deliberately entrusted some important topics to young comrades to complete independently, and did his best to create conditions for their improvement and development. He believes: "Academic leaders must give in in the face of fame and fortune, and they cannot let their fame and names stand in the way of others." ”
Since 1981, Zhou Yaohe and the discipline echelon led by him have published more than 300 papers, many of which were formulated and completed by him and colleagues, but he signed only 4 as the first author.
Zhou Yaohe (right) poses with Professor Campbell in 1991
In 1991, Zhou Yaohe was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and 20 years later, his student Wei Bingbo was also elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. As a generation of masters in China's science and technology education circles, Zhou Yaohe has trained more than 50 doctoral students, including the first foundry doctor in New China, and has made outstanding contributions to promoting the progress of China's physical metallurgy and aviation education and the cultivation of high-level talents.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="72" > devoted to scientific research and climbed the peak of casting</h1>
Since the early 1960s, Zhou Yaohe has carried out a lot of research work in Theory of Casting in China.
From 1961 to 1965, he published 9 papers and for the first time compiled the textbook "Casting Principle" for use by China's higher science and engineering colleges. In the study of the mechanism of liquid metal stop flow, he proposed a new method for calculating the filling capacity, and used insulation coatings to solve the problem of under-casting of large thin-walled components in the aviation industry, which greatly improved the pass rate of large thin-walled components in the aviation industry.
Through a large number of literature, Zhou Yaohe found that China's annual demand for metal castings is very large, for this reason, he decided to improve the quality of castings, save labor and energy as the goal, climb the peak of the world casting theory. He chose to start with a mouthful and start scientific research.
In 1978, Zhou Yaohe established a high-quality casting research group. On the basis of the information provided by foreign sources and in light of the actual conditions of our country, they drew up a research plan and began arduous experimental work. When the test entered the tense stage, it was summer, Zhou Yaohe was suffering from a serious cold, high fever did not go away, and liver disease recurred, but he still insisted on working with everyone to do more than three hundred tests under the high temperature, and obtained more than three thousand valuable data.
With these experimental materials, he completed more than 10,000 words of "Insulation Riser Research" paper, and was recommended by China's foundry industry as the 46th International Foundry Annual Conference to read the paper. Later, this achievement was used by more than ten factories in China and obtained great economic benefits.
In 1979, Zhou Yaohe presented a paper at the 46th International Foundry Annual Conference
In the 1980s, Zhou Yaohe presided over the national "Large Casting Solidification Control" project, which used a combination of numerical simulation and physical simulation to optimize the casting system and external cold iron design; at the same time, he also made a major breakthrough in the formation mechanism and control method of macroscopic segregation. In 1987, he presided over the invention of the "regulation and compression forming fine casting method", which made the ultra-thin casting of light alloy and the casting of precision complex inner cavity reach the international advanced level.
In 1991, Zhou Yaohe won the "Scientific and Technological Achievement Award" awarded by the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society; in the same year, he won the Aviation Gold Award, the highest honor award in the aviation industry for the first time since the founding of New China; in 1997, he was elected as an academician of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials Sciences.
In 1992, Zhou Yaohe (first from the left) took a group photo with Shi Changxu, Professor Grant and others
Entering the 21st century, Zhou Yaohe has set his sights on the sustainable development of the foundry industry. He organized a young team to devote themselves to the construction of ecological material science, on the one hand, to develop advanced metal material recycling technology to improve recycling efficiency; on the other hand, to study ways to improve the performance of metal materials to save the use of materials. After more than ten years of hard work, they have obtained dozens of national invention patents in metal melt purification and synthesis of high-performance materials, and provided complete sets of production equipment and technology to the society.
Because Zhou Yaohe has made outstanding contributions to the scientific development of China's metallurgy and casting industry, in 2012, the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society awarded him the first "China Foundry Lifetime Achievement Award".
On July 30, 2018, Zhou Yaohe died at the age of 92 due to ineffective medical treatment.
He has achieved many scientific research glories in his life, but he has always been indifferent to fame and fortune. He once said: "I am just a person who asks myself to be upright, diligent and down-to-earth to be a person worthy of the country and others." ”
As his student and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Wei Bingbo said: "Mr. Zhou has always put 'educating people and morality' and 'inspiring innovation' in the first place, and his noble personality image will always be a mirror of academic experience and human behavior." ”
Text: Collection Engineering Project Office/Innovation Strategy Research Institute of China Association for Science and Technology
Resources:
Leaf source. Zhou Yaohe[M].Shanghai Jiao Tong University Alumni Academician Style. Shanghai: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, 2000.10.1(259-265)
Shi Feng, Zhongyuan. The Veteran's Thoughts[N].China Education News, 1984.12.29(01).
Xu Cheng. A lifetime of hard work and fruitful results——Remembering Zhou Yaohe, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of Xigong University[N].Shaanxi Daily, 1996.2.27(03).
HE Qiang. Casting Life: Remembering Zhou Yaohe and Academician[N].Shanghai Jiaotong University Daily, 1999.4.15(01).
[5] "Zhou Yao and Academic Growth Data Collection Project Oral Interview Data", Old Scientist Academic Growth Data Collection Project
Zhou Yaohe. Three-point experience of supervising graduate students[J].China Electric Power Education, 1988.8.
Li Chenyan. Zhou Yaohe, the pioneer and founder of China's solidification science and technology, passed away, and he created a number of "firsts" in China's foundry industry[OL].Wenhui Network, 2018.7.30.
[8] The picture in this article is from the academic growth data collection project of old scientists