Written by: Meng Xiaohui
Translated by: Li Minghui
Edited by: William Mosteller
Date: 4.1
In the 1960s,
With the initial intention of cultivating talents
for the industrialization of the new China,
He resolutely chose to take root in the frontier.
Fifty-five years passed,
He never changed his mind.
Scientific research, strategic layout, team building…
He still enjoys what he committed to--
He is Du Shanyi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
In the early 1980s,
As one of the first visiting scholars for further study abroad,
He kept the needs of the Party and the country in mind,
studied assiduously,
and finally found the academic direction of compound materials,
which is crucial to the development of the national aerospace industry.
He declined the offer of his foreign mentor,
and returned to China with determination,
adhered to the original intention and mission
of serving the country through science and technology,
led his team to overcome difficulties,
and solved one key problem after another
in the field of compound materials.
Now in his 80s,
Still hale and hearty, with a full schedule,
Academician Du Shanyi said frankly:
Among the many major life choices he made,
It is the spirit of the "eight hundred heroes" of the older generation of HIT
that affected him unconsciously,
and he has also unconsciously passed the spirit on to his students.
What are in his mind are discipline construction and talent training,
the next century's development of HIT,
and the great dream of building a powerful country
in science and technology, education and socialist modernization.
