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Peking University, June 6, 2012: Professor Daniel Chee Tsui, the Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1998, delivered a lecture titled “Exploring the World of Two-Dimensional Electrons” at Yingjie Overseas Exchange Center at Peking University (PKU) on June 1, 2012, which marked the launch of PKU Global Fellowship.
Before the lecture, PKU Council Chairman Zhu Shanlu met with Professor Tsui. Zhu expressed his gratitude and great appreciation to Professor Tsui for his contribution to PKU. Zhu said that drawing talents is one of the crucial strategies of PKU and PKU would strengthen its appeal, promote its services, learn from others and innovate based on its own status quo in order to implement this strategy. In addition, PKU would also endeavor to provide better conditions for teaching and research on campus.
“Professor Tsui’s participation in this program will play an exemplary role in the process of .implementation,” Zhu said.
Professor Daniel Chee Tsui lecturing on two-dimensional electrons
After the meeting, Professor Tsui gave an introduction to two-dimensional electrons. Professor Du Ruirui, Dr. Lin Xi, and Dr. Zhang Chi from the International Center for Quantum Materials at PKU shared with the participants their researches in the quantum Hall effect, fractional charge, electron liquid and electron solid.
Peking University Global Fellowship is one of the important measures that PKU takes to accelerate its development into a world-class university. PKU will invite the world’s most prestigious scholars to give lectures, offer courses and initiate cooperative programs so that comprehensive innovation and development can be made possible. In the next five to ten years, PKU plans to invite at least ten globally renowned scholars to lecture at PKU annually. The scholar to be invited will be a leading expert in his or her discipline with a profound strategic foresight that is able to lead his or her own discipline to catch up with the globally advanced level or to keep such a level.
As the first scholar of the Peking University Global Fellowship, Professor Daniel Chee Tsui enjoys a renowned prestige in the world for his accomplishments in physics. He was born in He’nan Province, China in 1939, and later became a physicist studying the electrical properties of thin films and microstructures of semi-conductors and solid state physics. In 1998, along with Horst L. Stormer of Columbia and Robert Laughlin of Stanford, Tsui was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Currently, he is a research professor at Boston University.
Earlier the week, PKU held a special ceremony to confer an honorary doctorate on Professor Daniel Chee Tsui at the Tan Siu Lin Center for International Studies on May 29.
During the ceremony, Zhou Qifeng, President of PKU, briefly introduced Tsui’s life experiences and academic contributions to science. “PKU and Professor Tsui have developed good relationship. In the past few years, Professor Tsui paid visits to PKU many times and offered proposals to the developments of PKU, which has benefited us greatly,” he said, “I'd like to extend my gratitude to Professor Tsui and hope he would provide continuous support to PKU.”
Though in U.S. most of the time, Professor Tsui has always been concerned about the development of science and technology in China. He even lectured in China shortly after the policies of reform and opening up were carried out. In recent years, Professor Tsui visited PKU on several occasions, including attending the ceremony of the 100th anniversary of School of Physics, cooperating with International Center for Quantum Materials at PKU and hosting academic symposiums. He was also concerned about the growing of young talents. He communicated with PKU students many times and encouraged them to work hard and be creative.
Professor Tsui said he was excited in becoming a member of PKU, and shared the story of PKU and him with the audience. One time about 60 years ago, Professor Tsui came across several PKU students on a train and he wished to go to the same university. During his study in Hong Kong in 1950s, He met with some outstanding scholars from what was then Yenching University, from whom he felt the simple, dedicated academic spirit and sincere friendship between teachers and students. Since the initiation of academic exchanges between China and U.S. at the end of 1970s, Professor Tsui got the chance to visit PKU where he toured the semiconductor technology research lab and got moved by PKU teachers who were devoted to scientific researches under most difficult conditions. Over the past decades, Professor Tsui seemed to have developed an affection for PKU and it will surely grow fonder as he is now even more closely knit together with the future of PKU.
Edited by: Zhang Jiang, Fang Runiu, Chen Long
Source: Office of International Relations, PKU
