E Dongchen (; 15 July 1939 – 21 February 2019) was a Chinese earth scientist and polar explorer, acclaimed as the "father of polar surveying and mapping" in China. He participated in 11 polar expeditions, including the first Chinese expeditions to

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

and the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Mag ...

. He was a professor and doctoral advisor at

Wuhan University Wuhan University (WHU; ) is a public research university in Wuhan, Hubei. The university is sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Wuhan university was founded as one of the four elite universities in the early republican period of China and i ...

, and was a recipient of the

Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize The Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (HLHL, ) is a Hong Kong-based non-government organisation which annually bestows prizes upon Chinese scientists. It was established on 30 March 1994, with funds donated from the charitable foundations of Ho Sin Han ...

in Earth Sciences.

Biography

E Dongchen was born on 15 July 1939 in

Guangfeng Guangfeng District () is a district of the city of Shangrao, located in Northeastern Jiangxi Province, Eastern China. The easternmost county-level division of Jiangxi, Guangfeng borders Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. It covers . The population i ...

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...

, in the midst of the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

. When he was a child, his grandmother and father were killed by Japanese troops, and he worked as a cowherd to make a living. After the end of the wars and the establishment of the People's Republic of China, an elementary school was opened in his village in 1950 and he attended school for the first time at the age of 11. He excelled in school, and was admitted to the Wuhan Institute of Surveying and Mapping in 1960. After graduating in 1965 with a degree in astronomical and

geodetic survey Geodesy ( ) is the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth's figure ( geometric shape and size), orientation in space, and gravity. The field also incorporates studies of how these properties change over time and equiva ...

, he taught at a military academy and his alma mater, which was later merged into

to become its School of Geodesy and Geomatics. Antarctic Great Wall Station

In 1984, E joined China's first expedition to

under

Guo Kun Guo Kun (; September 1935 – 3 April 2019) was a Chinese polar explorer. He led China's first expedition to Antarctica in 1984–1985 and participated in seven Antarctic expeditions in total. He led the construction of China's first two Antarcti ...

, and led the surveying and mapping team. His team surveyed more than 1,600 points, and the expedition constructed China's first Antarctic research base, the

Great Wall Station The Great Wall Station () is the first Chinese research station in Antarctica and opened on 20 February 1985. It lies on the Fildes Peninsula on King George Island, and is about from the Chilean Frei Montalva Station, and from Cape Horn. The ...

, which was opened on 20 February 1985. Four years later, he joined another expedition and participated in the construction of China's second Antarctic base, the Zhongshan Station. When China sent its first scientific expedition to the

in 1999, E joined the team at the age of 60. He was the only scientist who participated in building all three Chinese polar research bases and the first North Pole expedition. In total, he took part in 11 polar expeditions, including seven to Antarctica and four to the North Pole. He named more than 300 features and places in Antarctica, including the Great Wall Bay, the first Chinese place name in Antarctica. E was an academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Director of the Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping. He received a number of awards, including the

in Earth Sciences. After his retirement, E became a writer of popular science books and a motivational speaker. He gave more than 600 speeches on polar exploration in universities and schools all over China. On 21 February 2019, E died at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, at the age of 79 (80 in

East Asian age reckoning Countries in the East Asian cultural sphere (China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and their diasporas) have traditionally used specific methods of reckoning a person's numerical age based not on their birthday but the calendar year, and what age one is ...

Selected publications

Among E's publications are: * Yuande YANG, Cheinway HWANG, Dongchen E, A fixed full-matrix method for determining ice sheet height change from satellite altimeter: an ENVISAT case study in East Antarctica with backscatter analysis, Journal of Geodesy, 2014, 88: 901–914 (SCI) * Yuande YANG, Dongchen E, Zemin WANG, Lexian YUAN, Elevation change from Zhongshan Station to Dome A using Envisat data, Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University, 2013, 38 (4): 383–385 (EI) * Jifeng Huang, Dongchen E, Shengkai Zhang, Zero calibration of bottom pressure gauge in Antarctic: A case study at Chinese Zhongshan station using GPS techniques, Proceedings – 2012 20th International Conference on Geoinformatics, 2012, DOI: 10.1109/Geoinformatics. 2012.6270311 (EI) * Yang YD, Dong-Chen E, HH Wang, DB Chao, C Hwang, F Li, and AS Tao, Sea ice concentration over the Antarctic Ocean from satellite pulse altimetry, Science China (Earth Science), 2011, 54 (1): 113–118 (SCI) * Dongchen E, Xin ZHANG, Zemin WANG, Chunxia ZHOU, Satellite monitoring of blue-ice extent in Grove mountains, Antarctica, Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University, 2011, 36 (9): 1009–1011, 1016. (EI) * Dongchen E, Luocheng ZHAO, Zemin WANG, Zhicai LUO, Establishment of gravity base over Larsemann Hills in Antarctica, Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University, 2011, 36(12): 1466–1469 (EI) * Feihu MA, Dongchen E, Jianhu ZHAO, Cuiyu SUN, Multi-beam sound intensity amplitude filtering methods, Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University, 2010, 35 (9): 1082–1085 (EI) * Dongchen E, Qiang SHEN, Ying XU, Gang CHEN, High-accuracy topographical information extraction based on fusion of ASTER stereo-data and ICESat/GLAS data in Antarctica, Science China (Earth Science), 2009, 52 (5): 714–722 (SCI) * Yuande YANG, Dongchen E, Dingbo CHAO, Haihong WANG, Seasonal and inter-annual change in land water storage from GRACE, Chinese Journal of Geophysics, 2009, 52 (12): 2987–2992 (SCI) * Yuande YANG, Dongchen E, Dingbo CHAO, The sea level change from the Antarctic ice sheet based on GRACE, Chinese Journal of Geophysics, 2009, 52 (9): 2222–2228 (SCI)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:E, Dongchen 1939 births 2019 deaths People from Shangrao Scientists from Jiangxi Wuhan University alumni Academic staff of Wuhan University Explorers of Antarctica Explorers of the Arctic Chinese earth scientists Chinese motivational speakers People's Republic of China science writers Chinese explorers