Su Buqing

Su Buqing

Su Buqing (September 23, 1902 - March 17, 2003), born in Pingyang, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, whose ancestral home is Quanzhou, Fujian Province, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a famous mathematician and educator in China, and the founder of the school of differential geometry in China. He is known as "the brilliant mathematical star in the oriental country", "the first geometer in the Orient" and "the king of mathematics".

He graduated from the Department of mathematics of northeastern Imperial University of Japan in 1927 and received a doctorate of Science in 1931. He was elected academician of Academia Sinica in 1948. He was appointed member of the academic department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955 and joined the Communist Party of China in 1959. After 1978, he became president and director of the Institute of mathematics of Fudan University and honorary president and professor of Fudan University.

Since 1927, he has published more than 160 mathematical papers and more than 10 monographs at home and abroad, founded the internationally recognized school of differential geometry of Zhejiang University, and studied the geometry of "k-span space" and projective curve.

Su Buqing is mainly engaged in the research of differential geometry and computational geometry. He has made outstanding achievements in affine differential geometry and projective differential geometry. He has made outstanding achievements in general space differential geometry, high-dimensional space conjugate theory, geometric shape design, computer-aided geometry design, etc.

Life of the characters

In September 1902 (the 28th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty), he was born in a mountain village in Pingyang County, Zhejiang Province. His father made a living by farming. In his childhood, he raised cattle and pigs, and did farm work such as mowing grass. Although his family was poor, his parents still saved money for him to go to school. In 1911 (the third year of Xuantong of the Qing Dynasty), he became a student in the first primary school of Pingyang County more than 100 miles away. In 1914 (the third year of the Republic of China), he was admitted to the old four-year Zhejiang provincial No.10 middle school with excellent results. In July 1919, when he was just 17 years old, he went to Japan to study with the help of Mr. Hong, the principal of the middle school. After a month of Japanese tutoring, in February 1920, he took part in the entrance examination of Tokyo Polytechnic College. With excellent results, he was admitted to the Electrical Engineering Department of Tokyo Polytechnic College. From 1920 to 1924, he studied in the Department of electrical engineering, Tokyo Polytechnic College, Japan. on September 1, 1923 (the 12th year of the Republic of China), Tokyo was hit by a big earthquake. After escaping from the disaster, he burned all his clothes, books and notes. In March of the next year, after graduating from Tokyo higher technical school, he went to apply for the Mathematics Department of the Institute of science of northeastern Imperial University, a famous Japanese university. With full marks in both courses, he ranked first among 90 candidates and was admitted to the Mathematics Department of northeastern Imperial University Chinese students studying abroad. In 1927 (the 16th year of the Republic of China), he graduated from the Department of mathematics, northeastern Imperial University of Japan. In early 1928 (17 years of the Republic of China), Su Buqing discovered the quartic (third-order) algebraic cone in the study of general surfaces. After the publication of his paper, it had a great response in the Japanese and international mathematical circles, and was called "Su cone". Since then, Su Buqing has been doing research as well as teaching. His research mainly focuses on affine differential geometry. He has published 41 papers in mathematical journals in Japan, the United States and Italy. Some people call him "the brilliant mathematical star rising over the eastern countries". At the beginning of 1931 (the 20th year of the Republic of China), he made an appointment with Mr. Chen Jiangong: after finishing his studies, he went to Zhejiang University together and spent 20 years to make the Mathematics Department of Zhejiang University the first class in the world and train talents for the country. With deep nostalgia for his motherland and hometown, he finally returned to his hometown where he had been away for 12 years and taught in the Mathematics Department of Zhejiang University I can't send it out. With the help of the acting principal, he overcame the difficulties and insisted on teaching and scientific research. Even during the Anti Japanese War, when the school moved to Guizhou, it was forced to hold discussion classes for students in caves. In 1933, he was promoted to Professor and head of the Department of mathematics. In 1937 (26 years of the Republic of China), the Department of mathematics of Zhejiang University showed great strength in training talents and began to recruit students graduate student. Fang Dezhi, his earliest student, has written a research paper. In the second half of the year, when Su Buqing evaded the invasion of the Japanese invading army, he still carried literature and insisted on studying in the air raid shelter. In Meitan, Su Buqing, together with his early students Xiong Quanzhi, Zhang Sucheng and Bai Zhengguo, insisted on the study of projective differential geometry and produced a series of important achievements. Many papers have been published in international influential journals, and enjoy a high reputation in the international geometry field. The school of differential geometry of Zhejiang University headed by Su Buqing has begun to take shape. Zhejiang University moved back to Hangzhou. Su Buqing and Chen Jiangong saw the need to connect the various branches of mathematics, implemented the principle of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, and decided to let two outstanding students Gu Chaohao and Zhang Mingyong participate in the two discussion classes of "differential geometry" and "function theory", which was also a pioneering work at that time. Zhejiang University has also sent several talented students to the Institute of mathematics of Academia Sinica in Shanghai, and several academically accomplished teachers have been selected to go abroad for further study. This is a measure for them to expand foreign exchanges. In November 1942 (the 31st year of the Republic of China), Joseph Needham, head of the British scientific expedition to China and professor of Cambridge University, visited the Mathematics Department of the school of science of Zhejiang University and repeatedly praised: "you are Cambridge in the East.". In the hard years, we should seize the time to write and sort out the research results. In the aspect of projective differential geometry, we should establish the basic theory of general projective curve by using the composition with geometric meaning. The book on projective curve in 1945 is a comprehensive report on this theory. Many important types of surfaces and conjugate nets are also studied, and abundant geometric compositions are obtained. Especially in the closed Laplacian sequence and composition (T4), the Laplacian sequence with period 4 is studied. In this paper, we study a special case in which their diagonals form a stratified couple. This kind of sequence is called "Su chain" internationally. The monograph introduction to projective curved surface published in 1946 is a summary of this aspect. In October 1952, due to the adjustment of colleges and departments in Colleges and universities across the country, he came to Fudan University as a professor and head of the Department of mathematics, and later served as the Dean, vice president and President of Fudan University. He has served as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference, a deputy to the National People's Congress, vice chairman of the seventh and Eighth National Committee of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference and vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Democratic League. in 1956, he won the first National Natural Science Award issued by the people's Republic of China for his research achievements in "k-space differential geometry", as well as his achievements in "general metric space geometry" and "projective space curve differential geometry" for many years. "K-space" is a new research field in the 1940s. In 1952, he was transferred to Fudan University due to the adjustment of national institutions of higher learning. In the late 1950s, a series of new and in-depth results were obtained by applying the external differential form method to the conjugate network theory of high-dimensional projective space, which has been summarized as a monograph "Introduction to projective conjugate networks". In 1978, he was the president of Fudan University. He did a lot of work for the education front, and made great contributions to teaching and scientific research. At the annual meeting of Shanghai mathematics society, he made a report entitled "theory and application of geometric shape design", and computational geometry, a new discipline, rose in China. He opened the course of five lectures on differential geometry and presided over a seminar on computational geometry. in January 1982, under the leadership of Professor Su Buqing, the national collaborative group of computational geometry was established, with the participation of Zhejiang University, Shandong University, University of science and technology of China, Institute of mathematics of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fudan University. Since then, academic conferences and classes on computational geometry have been held every two years, providing theories and methods for high-tech projects in China's computer-aided design and manufacturing, and cultivating a number of talents who combine theory with practice. In May 1980, Mr. Su presided over and held the first academic and working conference on Applied Mathematics in Colleges and universities directly under the State Education Commission in Shanghai, and later served as the consultant of each conference. In 1989, under his guidance and care, Shanghai Society of industrial and applied mathematics was established. In 1990, China Society of industrial and Applied Mathematics (csiam) was established. He was employed as a consultant. He died in Shanghai at 16:45:13 on March 17, 2003 at the age of 101.

Main achievements

scientific research

He founded the school of differential geometry in China and opened up a new research direction of computational geometry in his later years. he has made outstanding contributions to affine differential geometry, projective differential geometry, general spatial differential geometry and projective conjugate network theory, and established the internationally recognized school of Chinese differential geometry; when he was over 70 years old, he also started a new research direction of computational geometry in combination with solving the practical problem of mathematical lofting of ship hull. Su Buqing's research direction is mainly differential geometry. Most of Su Buqing's research work belongs to affine differential geometry and projective differential geometry. In addition, he devoted himself to the study of general space differential geometry and computational geometry. He founded the internationally recognized school of differential geometry in Zhejiang University.

Papers and works