Zhao Zisen (; 4 February 1932 – 15 December 2022) was a Chinese engineer, and an academician of the

Chinese Academy of Engineering The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE, ) is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for engineering. It was established in 1994 and is an institution of the State Council of China. The CAE and the Chinese Academy of Sciences ...

. He is noted for developing the first practical optical fiber in China in 1977, and has been hailed as the "Father of Optical Fiber in China". Zhao was a delegate to the 6th,

7th 7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. It is the only prime number preceding a cube (algebra), cube. As an early prime number in the series of positive integers, the number seven has greatly symbolic associations in religion ...

, and

8th National People's Congress The 8th National People's Congress () was in session from 1993 to 1998. It succeeded the 7th National People's Congress. It held five sessions in this period. Election results Elected state leaders In the 1st Session in 1993, the Congress elected ...

. He was a representative of the

16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party The 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was held in Beijing between November 8 and 14, 2002. It was preceded by the 15th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. 2,114 delegates and 40 specially invited delegates ...

Biography

Zhao was born in today's

Luwan District Luwan District (; Shanghainese: lu1uae1 chiu1, pinyin: Lúwān Qū), formerly romanized as Lokawei, was a district located in central Shanghai until its merger with Huangpu District in June 2011. It had an area of and population of 350,000 as o ...

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

, on 4 February 1932, while his

ancestral home An ancestral home is the place of origin of one's extended family, particularly the home owned and preserved by the same family for several generations. The term can refer to an individual house or estate, or to a broader geographic area such as a ...

is in

Zhongshan Zhongshan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is now part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen conurbation with 65,565,622 i ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

. His father was a shop assistant in a department store, and his mother was a salesperson. In 1937, the

Battle of Shanghai The Battle of Shanghai () was the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) of the Empire of Japan at the beginning of th ...

broke out, soon the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

occupied Shanghai, they had to relocate to the British Concession. He graduated from

Zhejiang University Zhejiang University, abbreviated as ZJU or Zheda and formerly romanized as Chekiang University, is a national public research university based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is a member of the prestigious C9 League and is selected into the na ...

Utopia University Utopia University, known in Chinese as Datong or Tatung University, was a private university in Shanghai. It was established in March 1912 by a group of former Tsinghua faculty members led by Hu Dunfu, and became one of the most reputable privat ...

, and Chiao Tung University. After university in 1953, he became an intern in

Nanjing Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

Telecom Bureau and then

Shenyang Shenyang (, ; ; Mandarin pronunciation: ), formerly known as Fengtian () or by its Manchu language, Manchu name Mukden, is a major China, Chinese sub-provincial city and the List of capitals in China#Province capitals, provincial capital of Lia ...

Telecom Bureau. He taught at Wuhan Telecommunication School in 1954 and then to Wuhan College of Posts and Telecommunications in 1958. In 1970, he became an engineer at the 528th Factory of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, where he worked for four years. He joined the Research Institute of Wuhan Academy of Posts and Telecommunications in 1974, becoming chief engineer in 1983 and vice president in 1987. On 15 December 2022, he died in

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei, Hubei Province in the China, People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the List of cities in China ...

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...

, at the age of 90.

Personal life

Zhao married Fan Youying (), who was a senior engineer at the Research Institute of Wuhan Academy of Posts and Telecommunications.

Publication

Honours and awards

* 1985 State Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Class) for the optical cable communication system * 1995 Member of the

(CAE) * 2005 State Science and Technology Progress Award (Second Class)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zhao, Zisen 1932 births 2022 deaths Engineers from Shanghai Zhejiang University alumni Utopia University alumni Members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Delegates to the 6th National People's Congress Delegates to the 7th National People's Congress Delegates to the 8th National People's Congress