Yu Min (; 16 August 1926 – 16 January 2019) was a prominent Chinese nuclear physicist, an academic of

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republi ...

(CAS), a lead nuclear weapon designer in the Ninth Academy, and a recipient of Two Bombs, One Satellite Achievement Medal. Though he personally refused to accept the title, he is honored as “the father of Chinese Hydrogen Bomb”.

Life

He was born in

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...

in August 1926. He was famous for his excellent performances in

Yaohua High School Yaohua High School () is a key school directly under the Tianjin Municipal Committee of Education, in the People's Republic of China. Introduction The school is located on 106, Nanjing Road, Heping District, Tianjin. The first four building ...

. Later he was admitted by Department of Electronics of Peking University, however, out of the passion for the physical theories, he transferred into Department of Physics to work on theory. From 1949, Yu started his postgraduate research in the Department of Physics of Peking University, and also served as a teaching assistant. In 1951, he became an assistant researcher and associate researcher at Modern Physics Institute of CAS, and began to study nuclear physics theory under the supervision of

Peng Huanwu Peng Huanwu (; October 6, 1915 – February 28, 2007) was a Chinese physicist. He was a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and a leader of Chinese nuclear weaponry projects. Life and career Peng was born in Changchun, Jilin Province; ...

. Early 1958, with China-Soviet National Defense Contract, Yu and his colleagues including Deng Jiaxian, Sun Yuzhang etc. moved to No.221 Factory near Lake Qinghaihu. From the end of 1960, Yu was involved in the theoretical research of nuclear weapons. His major contributions included the solutions to a series of fundamental and critical theoretical problems of nuclear weapons, which led to breakthrough of hydrogen bomb. He won the reputation and became the academician of Chinese Academy of Science for his design of

H-bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

. Yu's involvement with China's nuclear weapons program remained secret until his retirement in 1988. He was awarded the national top science award in January 2015. With the 5 million CNY prize, Yu founded the Yu Min Foundation to support scientific development in China. Yu died in Beijing on 16 January 2019.

Personal life

Yu married Sun Yuqin (), the couple had a son, Yu Xin (), and a daughter, Yu Yuan ().

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yu, Min 1926 births 2019 deaths Yaohua High School alumni National University of Peking alumni Chinese nuclear physicists Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Physicists from Tianjin Recipients of the Order of the Republic (China)