Academician Yu Guocong was one of the earliest scholars who returned from studying in the United States and made important contributions to the breakthrough of "two bombs and one satellite". He is the founder of distillation separation discipline in China, the pioneer of modern industrial distillation technology and the pioneer of chemical separation engineering science. He has been engaged in the research of chemical separation science and engineering for a long time, and has done systematic and pioneering work in the fields of rectification technology basic research, achievement transformation and industrialization. He is also an outstanding educator and the first batch of doctoral supervisors in China. It has trained nearly 100 doctoral students and master students, and delivered a large number of professionals for the chemical industry.
Tianjin University said in the obituary, "His death made us lose a master of chemistry and a kind teacher, which was a great loss for China's chemical industry, higher education and Tianjin University."
Determined to save the country through science
Resolutely return to China in its heyday
1922 1 1, Yu guocong was born in Taishan county, Guangzhou city, Guangdong province. He has been diligent and studious since childhood. 1In the autumn of 938, the Japanese army landed in Daya Bay and Guangzhou fell. /kloc-When he was 0/6 years old, Yu Guocong fled to Hong Kong by boat with his parents. His two brothers were bombed in flight. One person died and the other was seriously injured. This made the young man realize that he would be beaten if he fell behind. Saving the country and surviving depends on the efforts of everyone in China. Therefore, he firmly chose the road of saving the country through science.
1939 Yu guocong was admitted to the chemical engineering department of The National SouthWest Associated University, Kunming. /kloc-0 In the summer of 943, Yu Guocong graduated from Southwest Associated University with a bachelor's degree in engineering. Subsequently, he worked as an assistant engineer in the Central Industrial Laboratory of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Chongqing National Government.
At the end of 1943, the Ministry of Education of the National Government held the first self-funded examination for studying abroad. Yu Guocong took the exam and successfully got the admission notice from the University of Michigan. 1945 Graduated from the University of Michigan with a Master of Science degree, and then transferred to the Graduate School of the University of Pittsburgh.
65438-0947, Yu Guocong received his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. One of his doctoral research directions is distillation and the other is thermodynamics. During his studies, Yu Guocong was deeply appreciated by his tutor Professor Kul. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he was invited to stay as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, teaching chemical thermodynamics, mass transfer and separation processes to undergraduates and graduate students. Among them, the course "Advanced Chemical Thermodynamics" taught by him to graduate students is very popular, and engineers from some enterprises come here and become an extremely rare "big classroom" for graduate students.
While teaching, Yu Guocong continued his scientific research work, and together with Professor Kul, he directed the graduation thesis of master students and doctoral students. His theory of the relationship between vapor-liquid equilibrium composition and temperature has been adopted by some monographs and manuals for a long time and is called "residual-reservoir" equation. He made his mark in the United States and was accepted as a member of three honorary academic organizations: Sigma Xi, Phi Lambda Upsilon and American Research Society. 1950, Yu guocong was included in the list of American scientists when he was only 28 years old.
At this time, Yu Guocong knew very well that if he stayed in the United States, he would probably achieve even better results in the future. However, he knew that the newly established New China was in urgent need of talents. So, in August of 1950, Yu Guocong took a "one-month leave" from the University of Pittsburgh in the name of returning to Hong Kong to visit his mother. Only Professor Kuhl knows that Yu Guocong resigned and returned to China. In order to avoid the suspicion of the authorities, he also specially applied for a visa to return to the United States. In this way, with the enthusiasm of saving the country through science, Yu Guocong broke through many obstacles and resolutely returned to the motherland, becoming one of the first returned scholars.
At that time, a group of young scholars studying in the United States returned to China with Yu Guocong. On the ship "Wilson" bound for New China, young talents were in high spirits. Despite the difficulties, they still know that "science knows no borders, but scientists have nationality."
"Fight for Breath"
Live up to the trust of the Prime Minister.
After returning to China, Yu Guocong was invited by Mao Yisheng, president of Northern Jiaotong University, to be a professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Tangshan Institute of Technology (now Southwest Jiaotong University). 1952, Yu guocong was transferred to Tianjin university, where he devoted his life to the chemical industry in China.
1958, the first atomic reactor in China aided by the Soviet Union was put into operation. Nuclear reactors need heavy water as moderator. With the hostility between China and the Soviet Union, China's atomic energy industry is facing the threat of stopping operation. Yu Guocong has been determined to overcome the difficulty of separating heavy water since 1950s. His research work quickly gained the attention and support of the central authorities and superiors and was classified as top secret.
On may 28th, 1959, premier Zhou Enlai visited Tianjin university and specially visited Yu guocong's heavy water separation laboratory. He clasped Yu Guocong's hand and said, "I heard that you have made great achievements in heavy water research, and I am waiting for your news. Now someone is trying to get us by the neck. For the honor of the motherland, we must make our own heavy water and fight for a sigh of relief! "
Yu Guocong was deeply encouraged and inspired. In order to "win a breath", he even forgot to eat and sleep. He led the team to build one experimental device after another under extremely simple conditions, and creatively adopted a variety of innovative ways such as cascade distillation columns to replace the traditional distillation methods, overcoming one difficulty after another.
Soon after, the school told Yu Guocong that Premier Zhou called from Wuhan to pay attention to the progress of heavy water research. Yu Guocong replied: "You can tell the Prime Minister that the research is progressing smoothly."
196 1 year, China's heavy water production has entered a key stage. Premier Zhou personally asked and was in charge of the State Science and Technology Commission, and organized a key research group on heavy water production throughout the country. Yu Guocong is one of the main technical leaders. The heavy water research of Tianjin University led by him is listed as the key research project of the State Science and Technology Commission. Yu Guocong also undertook the task of cultivating talents for heavy water research. He founded the first professional class of stable isotope separation technology in Tianjin University, and personally compiled and taught the teaching materials, which laid the foundation for heavy water production in China from the aspects of technology and talents.
Yu Guocong lived up to his great trust and put forward the "double tower method" for concentrating heavy water for the first time. As the only technology to independently produce heavy water in China, this technology has continued to this day, making important contributions to China's complete self-sufficiency in heavy water, the start of new China nuclear technology and the breakthrough of "two bombs and one satellite".
"Get rid of the disease with your hands"
Promote the development of petrochemical industry
In the early 1980 s, Daqing Oilfield invested in the introduction of advanced negative pressure flash crude oil stabilization devices from the United States. At the same time, these devices are also supporting projects of Daqing 300,000-ton ethylene project. After the whole project is completed and put into production, it can provide 580,000 tons of plastic, chemical fiber and other commodity raw materials 17 every year, and can create a profit of 5 billion yuan every year. However, after the unit was put into production, the recovery rate of light hydrocarbons could not meet the production requirements. The vice president of American company led experts to debug for two months, but still failed to solve the problem. After that, I made some compensation to Daqing and left.
Yu Guocong was invited to lead the team to study the device, and soon found the problems, and applied independent technology to transform the device, successfully solved several key technical problems that restricted the normal production of the device, and finally realized the normal production of the whole device. Not only that, the technical indexes of their reformed equipment have exceeded the original design requirements.
Subsequently, Yu Guocong led the team to perform "major operations" on a series of super-large distillation columns, such as Yanshan Petrochemical's 300,000-ton ethylene plant, Maoming Petrochemical's large vacuum distillation column, Shanghai Gao Qiao's 10,000-ton vacuum distillation column and Qilu Petrochemical's 10,000-ton ethylene gasoline quench tower. This "operation" has increased the extraction rate of petroleum products in the refining process by 1 to 2 percentage points, which alone can increase the benefits of tens of millions of yuan for enterprises every year.
Yu Guocong also attaches great importance to market orientation and actively promotes industrialization. He personally founded the State Key Laboratory of Distillation and the earliest industrial processing center of high-efficiency distillation equipment in China, and creatively put forward the achievement transformation mode of "research and design-processing-installation-service through train", which liberated the team's innovation ability. In particular, technological progress has achieved great economic benefits, and the effect of energy saving and carbon reduction is remarkable, which has opened up prospects for the sustainable development and green development of China petrochemical industry.
Teach knowledge and educate people.
A veritable teacher
Yu Guocong, who spent most of his life on the university campus, defined himself as a people's teacher and took teaching and educating people as his greatest duty. He took the lead in teaching reform and presided over three large-scale teaching reform experiments, which achieved good results. When teaching students, he often gets up at 4: 00 in the morning and checks the lecture content again and again. Even though this course has been taught many times for many years, we should fully prepare lessons and update the teaching content.
Yu Guocong attaches great importance to practical teaching, reducing class hours when arranging courses, giving students more time for self-study, and giving them more time to find, analyze and solve problems. When reporting to experts, Yu Guocong said: "Quality education is a core of cultivating innovative talents. Our innovative talents must have good ideological quality, cultural quality and scientific quality. University is the basic education for cultivating innovative talents and an important stage of lifelong education. We must reform the talent training mode, teaching content, teaching methods and teaching means, and build a training framework for chemical innovative talents. "
85-year-old Yu Guocong insisted on giving undergraduates an innovative course of "Development and Innovation of Chemical Engineering". A class lasts nearly three hours, and the students are afraid that his body can't bear it, so they move a chair and want him to sit down and talk. But Yu Guocong always refused: "I am a teacher, and it is my duty to stand and give lectures." People who have listened to Yu Guocong's class say, "Teacher Yu regards lectures as an art".
Even during his stay in hospital, Yu Guocong never forgot to work. Tianjin University said that before New Year's Day in 20 19, Yu Guocong worked from night to early morning and was told by the doctor to make up his sleep. The computer on the desk is still in standby mode, and next to it is a book called "Mass Transfer in Chemical Calculation". There are many small pieces of paper on it, all of which are about the revision of this book.
98-year-old Yu Guocong is still working at his desk, revising manuscripts in front of his computer and answering emails. There is a thank-you letter from springer, a famous German science and technology publishing company, on the book Mass Transfer in Chemical Computation on the desk, praising him for "providing a high-level scientific monograph with excellent sales."
For decades, Yu Guocong has never forgotten the great trust of Premier Zhou. With the ambition of winning glory for his country, he integrated his love for his motherland into his career-winning a sigh of relief. As a scientific researcher, he actively promotes the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements and benefits the people; As a teacher, he devoted himself to educating people and created an echelon of talents for chemical research.
The soul of a loyal country is immortal! Goodbye, Mr. Yu Guocong!